Mixedblood
by Umodin
Summary: Filius Flitwick was used to having to look up when talking to prospective students, he expected them to be taller than he was. He was not, however, used to looking up at eleven year old boys that were taller than most seventh year Hogwarts students. He had only one conclusion upon seeing this potential student: giants blood.
1. I

**Disclaimers and all that rot: I own nothing but this fanfiction, and if you were told differently then please show me that in writing because I would love nothing more than to own the only book franchise in the world that has made over a billion dollars.**

 **Once again I return with another attempt at working the Harry Potterverse. I have found that this book series is easily the hardest bit I've attempted to write on, and that's saying something since I've written fics in GoT. This is a rewrite of another one of my fictions called Born of Earth, and hopefully it will turn out better than the older version did.**

 **Out of all my stories, be it past or present, I have never used an OC for a main character that didn't know the plot beforehand. They were either reincarnated or somehow miraculously arrived into that universe and did whatever they felt like with their unusual opportunity. With that said, I felt that such stories have somewhat degraded my enjoyment of these series I write for, sad as it may seem. This is my attempt at using an OC that does not possess any prior knowledge of this universe; one that I feel is quite unique in the HPverse. Though I think it is unique, it is nearly impossible to avoid clichés due to the massive amount that exist in fanfiction so please bear with me.**

 **Something to note, I set the HP timeline up 20 years in the future. Reason? Because I was six when the year 2000 came. I do not remember a lick of what happened in the 90's aside from Pokemon coming out and my older brother getting pissed at me when I deleted his save of Blue because I wanted to have a Bulbasaur.**

 **I am also looking for a beta. If anybody is interested in the position, please PM me and I'll get back to you as quick as I can.**

 **Special thanks to Noodlehammer for writing the story For Love of Magic, which is the inspiration that started this idea. He is an amazing author and I highly recommend you look up his work.**

TTTTTTTTTTTT

On the night of September 23rd, 1999, the London street of Burdett Road was quiet and unnaturally empty. A woman walked the street with purpose, a small basket covered in cloths inside was held in her left hand and a while a wand was tightly gripped in her right. She was large, far larger than any had the right to be and stood near twelve feet high. Minutes passed in a similar silence, a ward surrounded her that made her inconspicuous to any muggle watchers, and she found herself stopping in front of a large square brick lain building without any lights on.

 _Leopold House, 199 Burdett Road_ the sign read above the building door. She released a strained sigh, muttering to herself in French, and placed the basket on the step of the building. She bent down low, unveiling the cloths of the basket to reveal a fairly large babe with a small tuft of brown hair and pale olive skin sleeping peacefully.

She went through her robes and pulled out a piece of parchment. Tucking it inside the cloths that held her infant, she placed one last kiss on her sons head while tears marred the cloths surrounding him. She turned away, hiding her freely falling tears from the world and wordlessly apparated to places unknown.

The sound of her apparition awoke the baby boy in a jolt, causing him to wale loudly. The lights of Leopold House suddenly turned on, and the door swung open. An elderly woman with wavy grey-red hair and dull blue eyes stared blankly at the infant in a basket.

She groaned, a Scottish accent ringing through the building patio as she spoke to herself, "Why do these folk think this is 'ow they drop off'a kid? There're papers they got'ter sign fer a damn good reason."

With a put upon sigh she picked up the basket and brought it inside, trying her best to stoutly ignore the crying boy in order to process the fact that some _bloody idiot left a baby on her doorstep._ Yes, this building happened to be an orphanage, but there was a _process_ in which people left children to her care, and even then she had the right to reject children. Whoever dropped this child off was damn lucky that she had two open slots; else she'd have no choice but to bring the baby to the authorities.

She found a note in the basket, hidden under some of the layers of expensive cloths that told her that whoever dropped the baby boy off likely had the income to support him. She looked at the note and opened it.

A scoff escaped her throat, she didn't know how to read French and she wasn't going to bother looking for a translator; whoever dumped this child on her had no say in how he was brought up. The only thing that mattered was a name, and at the very bottom of the note had it written in an elegant script.

 _Gregor Anton Maxime_

TTTTTTTTTTTT

At the age of five Gregor understood he was different. He had a French surname and was tall. Taller than his fellow orphans, taller than even those that were past Primary School!

His size didn't make making friends very easy though.

When Ms. Waters, the Scottish matron that had brought Gregor inside as a baby, passed away in March of 2002, Leopold House was taken over by a new, stricter matron.

The replacement matron of Leopold House, Ms. Hill, was a firm believer in the Catholic Church, and she was quite open with her opinions. She claimed that tall children were fine, and then went on to claim that children his age being over four feet tall was unnatural.

She hated anything that was unnatural.

She also hated the French; meaning his surname gave her more incentive to dislike him.

Petty though it may have been, she warned the children of Leopold House away from Gregor. She caused a rift between him and his fellow orphans early on, one which made them antagonistic against the tall boy and Gregor to be more closed off as a whole because of it.

It was when he was five that he was able to truly _understand_ he was different from his fellow orphans; aside from the fact that he was taller than them and of French origin. During one of their required recesses a few children of Leopold House, ranging from ages four to twelve, had taken to playing a ballgame on a sunny Spring day. Gregor tried to join them but was told to bugger off by the older children while the younger just listened to their elder orphans. Gregor was, naturally, angry and wished and wished _and wished_ that if he couldn't play ball that nobody could.

And then the ball they were playing with popped.

It was labeled an accident, a simple problem that had a simple fix; using another ball. But, in that moment Gregor felt something he hadn't felt in all his five years at Leopold House, something he found he liked far more than playing with other children.

Power.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

"You're looking to adopt?" Matron Jane Hill asked the woman in front of her with a wide and yellowed smile over a pair of garishly purple painted lips.

Dorothy Clegane rose a trimmed eyebrow and chose not to dignify the woman across from her with an answer. What _else_ would she be doing at an orphanage, window shopping?

Though she had to admit she'd never expected to end up adopting in the first place; especially not in a muggle more so, her _fourth_ trip to a London orphanage.

She was the one planning to take in a child; she had the right to be picky.

She'd been born Dorothy Smith of the Ancient House of Smith, a family that claimed their descent from House Hufflepuff through the female line in the year 1976. Though her family had a well-respected title and claimant, she had no right to either due to something that her father labeled a birth defect.

She was born a squib.

When it was discovered that she was a squib on her eleventh birthday when no Hogwarts letter came, her father, Lord Edmure Smith, forced a myriad of potions down her throat that would ensure she could never become pregnant. He didn't want any _"upstart halfblood children of hers asking for a handout"_ as he so eloquently put it. He then took her by the collar, dragged her out into muggle London, implanted a mass of false memories into an elderly woman and from then on she became Dorothy Clegane, bastard and only child of Lysa Clegane; a very successful female entrepreneur in the automotive industry.

They lived a good life together until a decade later Lysa died of natural causes, leaving Dorothy a substantial inheritance that kept her quite comfortable. Comfort, however, didn't much matter when she was lonely. She had no belief that she would have many suitors due to her uneven face, crooked teeth and her plump body and with her inability to produce children she felt the loneliness quickly pile up without any likelihood of stopping.

So she'd attempted to substitute her loneliness by spoiling herself; the inheritance was plenty large and it wasn't like she could pass it on to the next generation. She went to the States and got surgery to even up her face, straighten out her teeth and remove her excess fat while also receiving lessons on beauty. She would never be able to compare to the true beauties that she saw from time to time, but she no longer felt undesirable and that was more important than anything. From then on she went traveling; enjoying the sights she saw and the men that now payed her attention. Still, she felt hollow, and after over a decade of this lavish life she determined that she needed more than just enjoyment; she needed a _family._

So, here she was. Back in London where she would to stay for good, her traveling days done, with the intention to adopt at the fair age of thirty two.

The orphanage matron, Jane, awkwardly coughed into her wrist and gave a fixed smiled to Dorothy. "Right. Well, the children are on their daily recess and should be outside. If you'd like to follow me I can show you them."

Dorothy nodded and the duo walked through the orphanage and into the backyard where a group of about fifteen children with ages ranging between three and sixteen were out and about.

"Children!" Matron Hill called, "come here and introduce yourselves to Ms. Clegane!"

Nine of them, the younger ones, scrambled over to her. The older ones just looked at her sullenly and ignored her presence all together.

Dorothy spent nearly twenty minutes just speaking to the many children in front of her. They were an interesting bunch, she noted, and desperate as well. Though, she herself would have been a similar circumstance if not for her father being such a heavy handed man and randomly finding a woman of higher means to adopt his squib daughter; though she highly doubted the man considered her a relation anymore.

Finally, after tiring of having children squabble to hold her attention, she looked around the yard more closely. There was a group of four teens just looking at her sullenly from a corner, talking in hushed whispers. There was a three year old playing in a sandpit without a care in the world. Her attention, however, was held by a fairly large boy sitting under a tree in the shade while staring at her with a furrowed brow.

"Ms. Hill." Dorothy said, "Who's the boy under the tree?"

Matron Hill looked over at the tree and scowled, "Nobody you'd be interested in."

That made Dorothy pause, "Actually." She said, "I'm quite interested." Anybody that could annoy this stiff old bat deserved a bit of attention.

The matron loudly exhaled through her nose, "The boy's name is Gregor Maxime, some French harlots son; left him here a week after he was born I'm told. He's- he's _unnatural._ Barely seven years old and already taller than some of the older children here, not only that but…" she trailed off.

Dorothy found her gaze immediately held on the boy. He wasn't much of a looker, his nose was fairly large and his brow was longer than average, but he had deep hazel eyes that seemed almost yellow in the sun and a batch of cropped dark brown hair.

That, and he seemed to bother the matron. Dorothy found it much easier enjoy people that caught the enmity of people she didn't enjoy the company of, and Jane Hill was one such woman.

"Not only that but…" Dorothy implored Jane to continue her train of thought.

Jane frowned slightly, her voice lowered so the children nearby couldn't fully hear her, "Things happen around him, _strange_ things. Have been since two years ago. Sometimes when the other kids ignore him, their toys break. Sometimes, when I walk past him my heels will snap from under me. One time, when it was his turn to sweep the floors the broom he was to use cut in half like an axe did it, but we don't keep any tools like that here."

Dorothy had heard enough, though unlikely she had a good guess as to what the issue with the boy was; she'd seen her older brother doing similar things in her early years. Accidental magic. Which meant that, if that truly was what was happening, that Gregor Maxime was a wizard.

She didn't spare a second to think about her decision; she made her choice the instant she'd made that revelation.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

Gregor Maxime, though he supposed his name was now Clegane, found his new home to be curious. Dorothy, who insisted heavily to be called mum, had told him that this was her own childhood home. Number 16, Prince George Road in Stoke Newington.

He'd never seen such a fancy place before, never been inside such a fancy place either.

In about a month they came into a routine. He was home schooled by Doro- _mum_ in the morning and afternoon since she had a primary education license but never took the opportunity to use it. After schooling they would do something together be it playing games, watching movies or going out somewhere in order to _bond_.

It took time, but Gregor found himself relaxing around his new… _mother_. He was used to adults spurning him, so it was only natural he be cautious when it came to spending long amounts of time with one.

It was also progressively getting easier for him to identify her as mu- _mum_.

Easier didn't necessarily mean it still happened easily.

Three months into his new living situation, Gregor told Dorothy about what happened around him when he wanted. That he could make things happen if he thought _really_ hard on it. Sometimes what he wanted would happen immediately, sometimes it would happen later. But, so long as he wanted, so long as he _willed_ it to happen, then it could.

And she told him about what he could do, about his magic, _magic!_ She said that the reason he caught her attention was not his size, but the stories Ms. Hill said about what happened around him. That she was born to a family that could do this, and when they learned she didn't have the ability she was kicked out and Lysa Clegane, his apparently deceased grandmother by law, had taken her in.

She didn't have much to say on what magic exactly was or how it worked, it wasn't like she knew much- it _had_ been over two decades for her. But, she knew enough to get his imagination working.

She also had a computer with access to the internet.

That was how he spent most of his free time away from Do- _mum_. Researching and learning about magic and supernatural abilities in legends and practicing what little he could with his magic.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

Filius Flitwick let out a small sigh as he used his wand to press the doorbell. Though being short was a boon in many situations in the wizarding world, he cursed his small stature when he was forced to enter the muggle world for visits such as this. The Clegane household was quite large, not obscenely so like many of the more affluent members of magical society boasted but definitely not what he expected.

The door opened only a minute after he pushed the button, revealing a woman in her mid-thirties with long dirty blonde hair, brown eyes and a small frown on her painted face.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"I believe you can, yes. Does a boy called Gregor Clegane live here?"

She narrowed her eyes and her red lips thinned, "Who's asking?"

It wasn't like a question like that told Filius that the boy _wasn't_ here.

"My name is Professor Filius Flitwick, I teach at a boarding school in Scotland that has accepted Mr. Clegane, should he agree to attend. Part of our policy is for our staff to personally determine whether a student will be joining us or not." That, and to figure out whether he needed to perform an Obliviation. He may not have agreed with the act, but understood it was necessary when facing muggles that believed magic and devilry were one and the same.

She stilled, her narrowed eyes widening a fraction before a smirk took pace over her thinned lips, "Would this school happen to be called Hogwarts?"

Filius couldn't help but goggle at the woman who looked like she'd just won a sort of lottery.

"How do you know about that?" he asked with wide eyes, if muggles learned about Hogwarts it could be disastrous.

She kept the smirk on her face and opened the door wide, beckoning the diminutive professor inside. "I was born a squib. I've forgotten a great deal of the wizarding world over the years, but the day I was kicked out of my home was also the day my Hogwarts letter was supposed to come in. I suppose you could say that the school is burned into my memory."

Filius found himself frowning; he'd never much cared for the way many members of the wizarding world looked upon squibs. Yes, they couldn't do magic, but that didn't mean they didn't have other abilities. Anybody could tend potions and work herbs and learn history and astrology. Squibs could be wonderful, if not a tad stunted, members of society and produce children that had higher chances of wielding magic.

"I'm sorry to hear about that, I know our world can be quite cruel to those that are different." He knew from personal experience, being a quarter-goblin. The goblins as a whole treated him neutrally, only slightly better than they did wizards, but Filius had to fight tooth and nail through the dueling circuits in his youth for the wizards and witches of Britain to treat him as an equal.

She shrugged her shoulders daintily, "I don't much care anymore. What's done is done and while I _do_ wish things had gone differently it was a quarter century in the past. Oh, but where are my manners? My names Dorothy Clegane, I'm Gregor's mother."

She led him to a quaint sitting room and let him have the couch, "Now please take a seat while I find Gregor, he's been looking forward to this for a while."

Filius found himself looking around the house in curiosity. Normally, when introducing himself to muggle families and muggleborns alike he had to prove magic existed, never getting the chance to well and truly give a house a proper look over. The walls of the Clegane household were white and the shelves were littered in knickknacks and books. He took a glance at some of the covers and delighted in what he believed may lead to a new Ravenclaw. They were filled in stories and legends and all sorts of fictions that looked ever so interesting to the Charms Master.

A cough was heard from behind and he turned only to see Dorothy standing next to a wall of flesh. He looked up, his neck straining like it would when he spoke to the ever tall Albus Dumbledore and didn't bother control his jaw as it opened involuntarily. This child of eleven was absolutely _huge!_ He stood at what looked to be over six feet tall with a long brow, slightly large nose, hazel eyes and cropped brown hair with stocky arms and legs covered in a pair of sweat pants and a gym shirt.

Filius had only seen one man in his life with a body type that fit the description he saw before him, on a larger level of course. Bu-but it was _impossible_ for a normal, human woman to bare a giants or a half-giants child! The human womb could never take such strain, nor could the woman that was pregnant survive when the child was stealing all of her basic nutrients.

"He- He hm… He takes after his father I suppose?" Filius said, trying and knowing he was failing at keeping his tongue in check.

Dorothy had to put a hand over her mouth to stop a torrent of giggles from escaping, and young Gregor held no such adversity to showing his amusement if his booming laugh was anything to go by. "Professor," Dorothy wheezed, "We look nothing alike! No, I adopted Gregor when he was seven."

That forced Filius to return to reality. He was a Ravenclaw, more than that he was a _professor!_ Normally he was calm and cool in the face of strange students, he'd just never had the chance to meet one that was so physically strange. No, it was best to think about such thoughts in a better environment, Hogwarts for example.

Speaking of Hogwarts.

"Ah! But the reason I'm here I suppose would be a good place to start, yes?" Filius said, earning nods from his hosts. He stuffed the whole of his arm into his seemingly small breast pocket and pulled out a letter. He handed it to the stunned boy with a small smile; that was one of the subtler ways to make people interested in magic. Expansion charms were among his favorites.

Gregor took the letter slowly, still wide eyed at the casual display of breaking physics and looked over the parchment with no small amount of curiosity.

 _The second bedroom, 16 Prince George Road_

 _HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY_

 _Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore_

 _(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,_ _  
_ _Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)_

 _Dear Mr. Clegane,_

 _We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment._

 _Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 1 August._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _Minerva McGonagall_

 _Deputy Headmistress_

He looked over the back of the letter, taking in the needed supplies with curiosity.

"As you are to be a first year student, it is my job as a professor to guide you through Diagon Alley, the cornerstone of the wizarding world in Britain. The letter states that you need to owl the school your acceptance, but since I'm here all I need is written consent from your mother and we can schedule in when I should take you to the alley."

Dorothy nodded quickly, "I always intended for him to go to Hogwarts. When do you have time for the three of us to go together if you don't mind me asking? I never had the opportunity to go the muggle way, only went through the floo as a girl you see…"

TTTTTTTTTTTT

"Are you certain?" Dumbledore asked in curiosity. Filius had just returned from his day of recruitment, and had apparently met a very interesting hopeful. Dumbledore always enjoyed hearing about the muggleborn crowd that would be joining his school, why just yesterday Minerva gave a glowing report about a young Granger girl that had him quite excited for the coming term.

"Certain? No. But it's the only thing that makes sense to me. He's likely got some giants blood in his veins, I doubt he's a half like Hagrid but possibly a quarter or an eighth that sprouted early."

Dumbledore nodded, stroking his beard absently with a far off look. This year was turning out to be interesting. Harry Potter would be returning to the wizarding world at long last, and now he had news that a mixedblood would be attending. He never cared much for the term, preferring to simply call them humans-with-a-little-extra, but it was an aptly blunt name if nothing else.

"Hm… I wonder if Hagrid would be willing to take him to Diagon Alley, perhaps give the boy some advice should he indeed have giants blood." Giants, while brutish and relatively low in intelligence, were connected to magic in a way wizards never would be. Giants were beings of earth, similar to how goblins were beings of metal and veela were beings of fire, and those that carried their blood in part had the ability to tap into certain properties of said element. Hagrid, even with a broken wand, was capable of silent Transfiguration since the study derived from the earth in its most primal form. He was also quite good with Herbology, which made Hagrid ideal for raising the various fruits and vegetables that were used during feasts and celebrations; Dumbledore especially loved Hagrids giant pumpkins on Halloween.

"I'm afraid I've already scheduled to take the boy and his mother to the alley, but I'm sure Hagrid would be delighted to talk to somebody about what it means to have giants blood; should young Gregor be mixedblood of course. If I were to just tell him my assumption and I turned out to be wrong, well… As the yanks say, it would make an ass out of me should I say something prematurely."

Dumbledore smiled down at the small professor, mirth dancing in his eyes at the mention of the American phrase. "A splendid and well thought plan as always; you do Ravenclaw proud, Filius."

TTTTTTTTTTTT

"This is the entrance to Diagon Alley?" Dorothy asked with a skeptical look on her face. While she wasn't expecting anything grand when it came to entering Diagon Alley, she did expect better than a pub with poor plumbing.

Filius chuckled lightly, "Indeed Dorothy. The Leaky Cauldron might not be the fanciest of places, but it's inconspicuous and that's what matters most."

Gregor looked around the pub curiously. There were all sorts of folk, men and women and old and young going about their mornings inside the Cauldron. A few were staring at him with sneers on their faces, muttering something about mixedbloods, and he found himself trying to hide inside his hoodie.

The odd trio walked through the back of the Leaky Cauldron and made way to a wall of bricks with a small indentation; like it was hit with a sledge hammer a few times.

"Now," Filius said, turning to Gregor and Dorothy and speaking as seriously as his high pitched voice allowed. "Diagon Alley is the largest marketplace of magical persuasion in Britain. Because of this, there will be all sorts of people around, and all sorts of curious items up for sale. I cannot stress this enough, but this is a _tour._ I am not going to take you to all the shops in the Alley, and I am not going to let you peruse to your hearts content in the shops that we will be going in. That is for you to do on your own time. What we will be doing is going to Gringotts to transfer your Pounds for Galleons, and then we will be going to the shops that sell your required supplies for Hogwarts. Since we are going to Diagon Alley as teacher, student and parent, please refer to me as Professor Flitwick for the remainder of our trip."

Without waiting for a reply from either of the Cleganes he turned around, pulled out his wand and tapped it on the brick wall five times around the indentation from left to right. The bricks collapsed on themselves and absorbed more bricks into each other until all that remained was a hole the size of a car, showing the trio the wonder that way Diagon Alley.

Professor Flitwick quickly had the mother-son pair follow him through the alley, and Gregor found himself entranced. It was thin; the cobblestone lain pavement separating the Victorian buildings of the was barely larger than a normal sidewalk and merchants of all walks of life, be it foreign or different species, were beckoning him and his mother over as loudly as they could.

Gregor wanted to look at their wares, desperate to sate his curiosity of the world he was to be a part of, but the tugging of his sleeve by his mum corrected such thoughts. He would have to wait until after the tour, until after Professor Flitwick was finished and gone, before he could look through the alley on a more personal level. By the gleam in his mums eye, she was of the same mindset.

Gregor had to squint his eyes when, upon reaching the end of Diagon Alley, he was led to a blindingly white multi-story building that seemed to reflect the sun like a mirror would. Standing guard at the white buildings silver doors gilded in gold were a pair of short bald creatures with leathery pink faces and tipped ears that were covered head to toe in red armor while wielding what seemed to be silver spears.

"Welcome to Gringotts," Professor Flitwick said, catching Gregors attention. "The safest place on earth; for Galleons at least. It's the bank of Britain, run and manned by goblins for over 500 years."

Gregor found his mind boggled at the thought. _These were goblins!_ He'd read a few stories where goblins were depicted as smelly, and completely unintelligent cannon fodder. His favorite game, World of Warcraft, also had goblins, though those ones also didn't fit the stereotype of the stories he'd read.

He sincerely hoped that the goblins of Gringotts were not in any way, shape or form similar to the goblins of WoW aside from sharing a species name.

Gregor also noted that Professor Flitwick was barely taller than the goblin guards. He chose not to dwell on it, size was something he himself struggled with though in the opposite format, and he was certain that no professor would care to hear a student ask about his stature.

He looked at the doors as they passed by, reading the phrase engraved in what looked to be rubies on the silver doors.

 _Enter, stranger, but take heed_

 _Of what awaits the sin of greed,_

 _For those who take, but do not earn,_

 _Must pay most dearly in their turn._

 _So if you seek beneath out floors_

 _A treasure that was never yours,_

 _Thief, you have been warned, beware_

 _Of finding more than treasure there._

 _Well,_ Gregor thought. _At least these goblins aren't like the ones from WoW._

He had to smother a snicker when he compared these goblins to _those_ goblins, Gringotts goblins would tear those green skinned pricks apart with a smile on their faces.

Professor Flitwick frowned and stopped Gregor. "Theft is no laughing matter to the goblins of Gringotts, Gregor. When somebody attempts to steal from them there are only two options; the gold price or the blood price. The gold price is simple, the goblins take everything you own from your Gringotts account; if the amount satisfies them you shall live and forevermore be banned from the bank. The blood price comes about if the amount in your vault doesn't satisfy them, meaning they will simply torture you to death. Do not _ever_ contemplate theft in Gringotts."

Gregor was quick to stop snickering when he noticed the barely hidden sneers on the faces of a few goblins that heard his laughter. With a small shudder he quickened his pace with his soon-to-be-professor and his mum. These goblins sounded a fair bit more like orcs from WoW than anything else.

Professor Flitwick led them through the halls of Gringotts, making way to one of the many teller stations that littered the lobby labeled with the number fifty three in bright gold script. Filius calmly spoke in a hushed guttural tongue and held out the back of his hand, which was tapped by the back of the tellers hand in turn. The teller turned his attention onto Dorothy, "Do you desire a vault, or just conversion?" he questioned bluntly, his voice far deeper than either of the Cleganes expected when compared to Professor Flitwick's natural squeak.

Dorothy blinked a few times, not expecting to be addressed in such a way, but quickly composed herself. "Both if possible. Gregor will be a part of this world and I'd like him to have every opportunity he can."

The teller nodded, pulled out a parchment and quill and wrote something down in a strange set of letters. He handed the freshly inked letter over to Dorothy and spoke clearly. "Take this to teller station forty five to convert your muggle currency into Galleons, then go to teller station thirty two to use those Galleons to purchase a vault." He then pointed to where both teller stations were and shooed them away.

They gave their thanks and made their way over to station forty five, having to wait in line behind a family of three; two moderate looking adults and a little girl with bushy brown hair looking around the bank with overly clinical fascination. Time passed somewhat slowly, it took some twenty minutes for the family of three to finish their business, but Dorothy was finally able to speak to the teller.

"20 Pounds is the equivalent to 1 Galleon, Mrs. Clegane." The goblin behind the teller station said.

She nodded and dug her hand through her purse, "Does this bank take cheques?" The teller nodded quickly, informing her that so long as her muggle bank was based in Britain they would do so.

Money was exchanged easily enough from that point on. Dorothy was a believer in being safe over being sorry, and exchanged 2,000 Pounds for 100 Galleons; an amount that Professor Flitwick assured her would easily pay for a vault, Gregors school supplies, and plenty extra without issue.

They then made way to teller station thirty two, which was luckily completely devoid of any lines.

The goblin teller looked at the trio, offering a small nod towards Professor Flitwick and held out a hand. It took a moment for Dorothy to understand what the goblin wanted and she hastily dug through her purse and handed the teller the piece of parchment the teller at station fifty three wrote her.

He looked over the page and nodded with satisfaction. "Gringotts Vaults come in many different varieties, each involving different levels of security. The larger the vault number the closer it is to the bottom, while the smaller the vault number the closer it is to the top. Because of this, larger number vaults tend to be more expensive."

Gregor furrowed his brow, "What do you mean by closer to the bottom?"

The goblin looked at Gregor with annoyance, "The goblins as a whole live underground, we find strength being near earth and metal in their untouched form. Gringotts is merely an entrance for humans and other magicals to use our caverns to store gold and valuables. The closer to the bottom a vault is, the less likely anybody would be attempt to steal from the vault. Though theft attempts are rare, we get one or two annually, and while it is even rarer for a theft to be successful there has never been a theft from a high numbered vault."

Gregor was about to ask another question but a quick smack in the arm from his mum got him to shut his mouth. Dorothy smiled apologetically to the teller and was met only with a blank look and a raised eyebrow.

She coughed awkwardly into her hand, "What are prices?"

"As I said earlier, Gringotts vaults come in a variety of security levels. Every fifty vaults the security is increased, the size, and the price along with it. Currently, for a vault between the numbers one and forty nine, the starting price would be 50 Galleons."

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, "How much is a vault from the next tier?"

"Fifty to ninety nine?"

"Yes."

"200 Galleons."

"Is there any way that we could get discounts or are there things you would trade for better vaults?" she said with a small stutter, the price elevation had caught her off guard.

The teller offered a sneer, "Discounts are only available to those that work for Gingotts or share goblin blood. The only thing we would be willing to _barter_ with would be goblin made possessions. Tell me, do you have any?"

The moment Gregor heard the statement he immediately filed it away in his mind.

She sighed, "One vault from the lowest tier then."

The teller nodded, his sneer replaced with a bland look on his face, and pulled out a large leather bound book. He opened it and, after turning through some of the many pages, turned it around to show it to Dorothy.

"Currently we only have six low tier vaults in service; vaults 8, 11, 24, 28, 37 and 41. You've the right to pick your vault from those available."

Dorothy turned to her son and motioned for him to speak. "It's to be your vault, go ahead and choose."

He cupped his chin and closed his eyes, "Well, my favorite number _is_ 8." It was a good, solid number and sideways it was the infinity symbol.

The teller nodded, "Very well, the Galleons?"

Dorothy handed them over with a pained look on her face; she didn't enjoy spending 2,000 Pounds only to lose half of what she'd spent in a single moment.

The teller took the money without the slightest inclination of caring about the look on her face and pulled out a contract and a quill with a red tip, "The owner of the vault will sign here using this quill."

Gregor turned to his mother and she ignored him and instead took the contract.

She gave it to him a few minutes later, "There's nothing bad on here, it just says what you can and can't store in your vault and that you should be aware that since you're buying a lower tier vault that it's more likely you'll be stolen from."

Gregor nodded and wrote out his name on the contract with the quill, wincing slightly at the painful feeling on the back of his hand. The teller snatched both the contract and quill back and, after rolling up the contract and putting it in a drawer, pulled out a dull grey key with a set of small runic indentations all along the metal. He put the tip of the quill against the runes of the key and Gregor and Dorothy watched with wonder as the grey key turned bronze before their eyes and the runes disappeared. "This key has just been bound to your blood through use of a Blood Quill. It will respond to any that use it so long as you yourself give them permission."

TTTTTTTTTTTT

Upon leaving Gringotts the trio began Gregor's school shopping in earnest. The first stop was Madam Malkin's Robes for all Occasions. Despite Gregors size and likelihood to still grow, she stayed entirely professional and outfitted him accordingly. He was being fitted next to the bushy haired girl that stood in front of him in the bank and some Parkinson girl. Gregor was quite glad that she apparently mistook him for an older year and generally ignored his presence; he found her interaction with the bushy haired girl to be quite disturbing.

The trip to the local apothecary passed without incident.

When they were getting a trunk for him, Gregor asked Professor Flitwick a simple question he meant to ask at the apothecary but was otherwise distracted by the myriad of curious ingredients that littered the shop.

"Professor, what does mudblood mean?"

The small statured professor stiffened his shoulders, "Where did you hear that term?"

"In Madam Malkin's, some Parkinson girl was calling another girl one; that brown haired girl that was in front of us at station forty five in Gringotts."

Professor Flitwick nodded with a frown, "Mudblood is a cruel and derogatory term for what some of the higher class wizards and witches of magical Britain, called purebloods, call muggleborns; it essentially means they have dirty blood. Sadly, some of these purebloods like to teach their children to use these words and, children being children, listen to what comes from their parents' mouth without filter. When the school year starts up I'll make sure to speak to Ms. Parkinson, but as it stands at the moment I have no right to counsel her choice of words."

Gregor had a scowl on his face, his teeth grinding lightly. He didn't like people acting like that, not at all. Though rare, he had gotten plenty of whispers behind his back for his unusual size, and he _vividly_ remembered Ms. Hill calling him unnatural and telling other orphans to avoid him.

The trip to the local apothecary passed without incident. In the Magical Menagerie, Dorothy bought a standard tawny owl to carry mail back and forth between Hogwarts and their house. She did not, however, get a pet meant singularly for Gregor; he didn't find anything of interest and Dorothy decided that their new owl, who was named Sandor, would be a family pet and that Gregor didn't need anything more than that.

The last stop prior to Gregor's perusal of the book store was the wand shop, Ollivander's.

They walked inside the small side-alley shop that had dust littered everywhere and was home to various wands and boxes that likely held even more wands.

"Good afternoon." The soft greeting came from behind, causing Gregor to give his standard knee-jerk reaction to being surprised.

He turned around and punched.

Ollivander stared at Gregor's incoming fist, his wide eyes looked magnified behind his glasses, and barely dodged the punch. Gregor's arm was buried in the wood of the wall, right above Ollivanders left shoulder while the wand crafters head was tilted away from the meaty limb.

"Well, perhaps not so good anymore." He said slowly, and Gregor flushed red and muttered an apology. Over the last year, Gregor had been attending boxing classes on his mums order so that he would _"learn how to use his size properly."_ He wasn't a great fighter or anything along those lines, but he did build up the standard physical reactions that were commonly associated with fighters, including what Ollivander nearly experienced. Dorothy did not look disapproving in the slightest for his use of violence and Professor Flitwick appeared to be trying very hard not to fall on the floor laughing.

Ollivander's attention went from Gregor's arm towards the squeaking Professor Flitwick, who had a tear in his eye.

"Filius Flitwick, how I wish I was the one to match you."

"I-I'm afraid Gregorovitch w-would be quite cross with me, as would my wand, if I let y-you try Garrick." Professor Flitwick wheezed out poorly, his squeaky laugh filling the small shop.

Ollivander nodded, seemingly satisfied with his answer. "Yes indeed, your wand would be cross and rightly so. For it is the wand that chooses the wizard." He chose that moment to move away from Gregor's arm and began to sort through the various boxes on the shelves of his shop.

He handed Gregor a wand that was seemingly pulled at random, "Try this one. Beechwood and unicorn hair, ten inches; fairly brittle. Give it a wave."

Gregor complied mutely, still embarrassed from nearly punching the ancient salesman. Nothing escaped the tip of the wand, and Ollivander snatched it away an instant later muttering no's as he continued to give the large boy more and more wands.

After a total of thirty seven wands were tried, Gregor finally found a match. The wand in his hand let out a mass of yellow sparks, which caused Ollivander to clap joyously.

"Indeed! Well done! Vinewood and dragon heartstring, fourteen and a half inches; unyielding. Good for transfigurations."

Dorothy paid for the wand immediately after, she did not appreciate having to spend an hour in this small shop Professor Flitwick had left the shop midway in and returned with sandwiches from the Leaky Cauldron for the Cleganes, an action that was well received by them and largely ignored by Ollivander.

"Gregor," Professor Flitwick said as he finished his sandwich. "This day has been eventful, and I have enjoyed it, but not even I expected for you to spend so long at Ollivanders. I have other duties to attend to at Hogwarts and I doubt I'll have enough time left to take you around the rest of Diagon. Instead, I'll just tell you what you need to know now and I'll head out; the only things you need to buy now are books anyways."

The large boy nodded and Professor Flitwick spoke once more. "First and foremost, do _not_ go into Knockturn Alley, not until you are 17 and able to use magic without preamble at the very least. It is located to the left of Gringotts entrance and caters to the less savory folk in the wizarding world. They will not appreciate your mother being a squib, and they would make assumptions about your size that is best left for when you're older. If you need any help with looking for someone or something in Diagon, the owner of the Leak Cauldron, Tom, would be more than happy to give you directions or tell you who to talk to.

"Finally, do not buy any potions that aren't an over the counter brand unless you ask for proof of the brewers qualifications. If you're wondering what constitutes for an over the counter potion, go back to the apothecary and ask for a form; it'll have the information on it. While relatively rare, some people sell potions they buy from Knockturn Alley in Diagon while lying about what the effects are, which can lead to disaster. These are very simple rules, but the fact of the matter is that you are 11, and while you seem mature for your age you _need_ to listen to these rules. Do you understand?"

Gregor nodded quickly, all in all he found those rules to be perfectly reasonable. Don't go to Knockturn, ask for help if you need help, don't buy potions if you don't know who brewed them.

Professor Flitwick smiled, "Well, it's been good to meet you properly today, and I hope to see you even more in the school year but I really must be going. Have a good rest of your trip in Diagon." He then walked out of Ollivander's and disappeared in a loud pop, his form looking like it was sucked through a tube.

Gregor looked at the spot his professor had been with wide eyes while Dorothy just smiled and tugged on his arm. "C'mon Gregor," she said. "We've an Alley to explore!"

TTTTTTTTTTTT

Gregor sunk into the cushioned seat of his Hogwarts Express compartment with a sigh of relief.

Leaving his mum for ten months would be difficult. He truly came to view her as a mother after his first six months in her care; she was upfront in the fact that she only found him interesting at first and her interest turned into affection.

He was also going to miss his computer. And WoW, can't forget that.

He would miss the internet in general.

He dug through his backpack and withdrew a copy of the _Book of Rune Secrets_ , one of his extra purchases from Flourish and Blotts, which served as the textbook for the Ancient Runes course to coincide class lectures for years 3, 4 and 5. He'd found runes absolutely fascinating ever since he saw the goblin tellers casual display of them on his Gringotts key. Currently he couldn't make out what the book was asking for very well, but he had years of study ahead and he was sure there would be a student or two that would be willing to help him out.

Speaking of Gringotts, or more specifically the location that Gringotts was located at, Gregor and his mother had returned to Diagon Alley five times after their initial tour. They explored the Alley as much as they could; heeding Professor Flitwick's warning and straying away from Knockturn Alley all the same. There was just _so much there!_ They could spend months in the Alley and still not find or learn everything there was to offer.

His mum wanted to be able to go there at any time too, so she bought a floo connection.

Personally Gregor had always thought his mums' spending was a little haphazard, but he knew not to complain when the things she bought were for his benefit.

"Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?"

Gregor's was quite glad he chose to sit close to the window; else he would have just elbowed some poor girl in the face. He turned his head, eyes wide in surprise, only to find the same bushy haired girl from the bank and Madam Malkin's standing in the doorway of his compartment with her belongings at her side.

Wordlessly he nodded to her, and she smiled widely in return; showing off a pair of large and glaringly white teeth. She marched inside with authority, bringing her trolley into the compartment and Gregor silently helped her put her things in the overhead.

"Thank you. Are you a fifth year by chance?"

"First year."

She stared at him with an open mouth, no doubt judging him silently, before grinning openly.

"Me too! Oh I can't wait to start the term, I was ever so surprised to learn I had magic; I'm a muggleborn you see. Oh, I'm sorry, I've been quite rude haven't I? My name's Hermione Granger, and you are?"

Gregor blinked at her slowly, taking a moment to comprehend the words she spoke in rapid fire.

He was also surprised to learn that, even if she seemed a tad brusque, she had enough tact not to ask about his height.

"Gregor Clegane." He slowly stated, taking a moment to sit back down and place his book on his lap; an action Hermione noticed quickly.

"It's nice to meet you! If you don't mind me asking what book are you reading? I've read and memorized all the required books for the year but didn't see that one on the list."

Gregor had to take a moment to process what she said once more before speaking, and also took a moment to wonder if he should have paid more attention to his own books for the year outside of skimming. "It's the textbook for Ancient Runes."

She smiled widely, "Oh! That sounds interesting, I would have bought it but I spent most of my allowance on books that were recommended from our textbooks, like an addition to our potions book that explained some ingredient reactions. Why did you get that book? If you don't mind me asking of course."

That started a fairly pleasant conversation about runes and how both had seen them used that lasted all the way until the Express left for Hogwarts. Going from Gregors experience through Gringotts to Hermione's through an upgraded trunk she saw that had a rune chain meant for expansion. Gregor found Hermione to be a nice enough girl, if a tad belligerent and prone to bossiness.

Their compartment opened once more, thirty minutes into the trip, revealing a chubby boy with sandy blond hair and light blue eyes.

"Have you two seen a toad? I've been looking for Trevor ever since the train started moving."

Hermione seemed sympathetic to his cause and, while she admitted she hadn't seen a toad, she offered to help him look. He smiled widely at that and introduced himself as Neville Longbottom.

"Gregor, would you like to help us?" Hermione asked.

Gregor liked to think of himself as a nice enough guy, but he didn't really want to leave his compartment; especially not in search for a toad. "I'll hold down the fort, wouldn't want anybody to take our compartment."

Hermione nodded jerkily, her bushy hair splaying everywhere as she did so. "Of course."

It took thirty minutes for her to come back, this time with a teary faced Neville taking a sit next to her. Gregor didn't necessarily mind adding another to the compartment, he actually welcomed the chance to meet other people, he just didn't much like the way Neville was acting. Still, his mum forced enough manners down his throat for him to know that, should he comment on it, it would likely earn him no friends.

And wasn't that the whole point of the Hogwarts Express when, instead, one could simply use the floo?

Conversation in the compartment died relatively quickly however, Neville was sniffling randomly and Hermione didn't have the heart to just ignored him. Gregor found himself returning to his runes book, gladder than ever that he didn't leave it in his trunk like he did the rest of his books.

Another twenty minutes passed silently in the compartment until, _once again_ , it was opened; this time with relative force. A pale blonde boy and a pair of chunky kids that were taller than average though nowhere near Gregors size stepped forward.

"I'm looking for Harry Potter, you three know where he's at?" He asked, though it sounded more like a demand.

Gregor had of course heard of Harry Potter, how could he not when Diagon Alley had been going absolutely mad after he came through? He was curious, naturally so, and bought one of the Harry Potter adventure books from Flourish and Blotts.

What an absolute load of rubbish. The book was filled with nonsense about a six year old Harry and his house elf sidekick, whatever those were, that went around saving pureblood princesses. It was easy to figure out that the books were simply works of fiction, but they, the author of the series, would need Harry Potters say so on whether or not his name could be used.

It made Gregor less interested in meeting the famed Boy-Who-Lived.

"You're quite rude, did you know? Barging into our compartment, asking about some boy without even giving your name or asking for ours in turn?" Hermione said, her voice prim and proper and filled with admonishment.

The pale boy flushed pink before straightening, "Apologies, you're right of course. My name is Draco Malfoy, these are my friends Crabbe and Goyle. And you are?"

"My name is Hermione Granger."

Draco scrunched up his face, trying to place the name. "Any relation to Hector Dagworth-Granger? The Potions Master?"

Hermione looked thoughtful but shook her head, "Not that I know of, maybe. I'm muggleborn you see, but–"

"Oh, just a mudblood."

Hermione looked as if she'd just been slapped, Neville gasped and Gregor...

Well, Gregor, ever since his first trip to Diagon Alley, learned he hated that word. He stood up, catching the immediate attention of the trio and spoke one simple word with as much force as his voice that, contrary to how his body looked, still held the high pitch one would expect from an eleven year old, " _Leave._ "

Draco was caught off guard, especially when the boy in the corner turned out to be a good foot taller than both Crabbe and Goyle and his arms were even thicker than the chubby boys and a much meaner look in his eyes than any of the three could use. He offered the compartment trio one last sneer and walked out, Crbbe and Goyle following along like dogs.

Gregor grabbed the door, slammed it closed and returned to his seat. Neville looked to him with a sense of awe while Hermione stared at him in what seemed to be both thanks and admonishment.

The rest of the Express went by in silent with no more unexpected interuptions.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

"Clegane, Gregor!" Professor McGonagall called, her voice echoing across the Great Hall where a myriad of students ranging from ages twelve to eighteen sat along the four long tables.

He walked towards the professor with as much purpose as he could, trying to hide any embarrassment he might have felt from being singled out.

"Look at that kid, he's huge!" Was what was said throughout three of the four tables in varying forms.

" _Mixedblood filth."_ Was what the last of the tables primarily said.

He ignored the voices as best he could, though his teeth were grinding, and after sitting on the stool the ratty sorting hat was placed atop his head, making all the sounds of the hall die out as an ancient voice spoke softly.

 _Curious_ , the voice of the hat murmured in his mind, startling him lightly. _You have plenty of smarts, definitely enjoy a good book, but you don't have much interest in academics do you?_

Gregor didn't really know what to say to that, his grades were decent enough he supposed but they never held his attention. What _did_ hold his attention was magic, more specifically the learning of magic now that he was at a school dedicated to just that.

He supposed that wasn't a particularly unusual mindset.

 _Yes, I see,_ said the hat. _You have a thirst for magical knowledge and have quite an ambition and work ethic towards what catches your fancy, though your cunning is relatively low so Slytherin would be a poor choice. Mmm… You'd do well in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff though; they tend to have a similar mindset._

So put me in one of those houses, Gregor thought. He didn't really care which house he ended up in; where he slept and what colors he wore had nothing to do with learning magic after all. Didn't mean he liked a ragged piece of cloth telling him he had low cunning all the same.

 _Ah, but I'm not done yet. Mmm… Plenty of courage, willing to do what is right over what is easy. Yes, yes you have the smarts for Ravenclaw and the attitude for Hufflepuff, but your merits would suit you far best in_ "GRYFFINDOR!"

He made his way towards the house of the brave, his tie turning red and gold as he walked. He had to smother a snigger as a pair of ginger twins acted like Christmas had come early when they did the exact same thing for the Brown girl that got placed in Gryffindor before him.

The rest of the sortings were relatively tame. Hermione and Neville both made their way to the lions table too, each taking a seat next to Gregor. Draco Malfoy was placed in Slytherin without even having the hat touch his head.

Then came Harry Potter.

The hall stilled, people were whispering none too quietly over the Boy-Who-Lived and Gregor finally got a good look at the magical celebrity. He was a pretty short kid, shorter than almost all of the first years, with messy black hair, pale skin and green eyes hidden behind a pair of large glasses. And, of course, the fabled lightning bolt scar hidden under his fringe.

The boy seemed to shrink when his name was called and hesitantly made his way to the sorting hat. When it was placed on his head, he scrunched up his face and abruptly paled. A moment later the hat yelled out to the world "GRYFFINDOR!" and the whole of the table burst into applause.

Gregor politely clapped along with his table, but couldn't help but feel a little disappointed with how the boy wonder seemed so scared of attention; a thought many members of Hogwarts also held.

The rest of the sortings were simple things, the Gryffindors received two more first years in the form of Dean Thomas, who found a seat next to Seamus Finnegan across from Gregor, and Ron Weasley, who took a seat next to Harry Potter.

The sorting ended when a boy named Blaise Zabini went to Slytherin and, soon after came the feast. Gregor had a grand time gorging the various foods down, much to Hermione's unhidden disgust. He also got to meet some of his classmates, Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas, who were both nearby. They seemed like a pair of right decent blokes.

When the feast ended Headmaster Dumbledore stood from his throne-like chair at the head table and pointed his wand to his throat, making his voice amplify throughout the hall.

"Just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered. I have a few start-of-term notices to give you.

"First years should not that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well." His gaze lingered on the ginger twins that Gregor now knew were called Fred and George Weasley as they tried to look as inconspicuous as possible.

"I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors."

Gregor shrugged, not really bothered by the rule. It essentially said he couldn't use magic in the halls during class hours, but he could still do so in classrooms and on weekends. There weren't enough teachers at the head table to take up all of the rooms in Hogwarts, and he was sure to find a good empty classroom for practice. He'd make sure to ask Professor Flitwick, the man was blunt with Gregor and seemed willing to help out a student easily enough.

"Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch.

"And finally, I must tell you that this year the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death."

TTTTTTTTTTTT

Gregor, along with his fellow Gryffindor first years followed the ginger prefect called Percy Weasley from the Great Hall to a portrait of a fat woman in a pink dress. While they were making their way to the dorms they were stopped by a poltergeist named Peeves, and Gregor could tell that that one would be an annoyance. He couldn't help but wonder how many members of the Weasley family were at Hogwarts, he knew that there was another ginger in their year; was it possible that there were even more?

"Password?" the fat lady said. Gregor had only seen talking portraits twice before, once in the Leaky Cauldron where the previous owner found great enjoyment in taking a mickey out of Tom and in Flourish and Blotts, where the portrait of the current managers aunt kept an eye on anybody that tried to steal books and would screech at the top of her lungs for the whole of Diagon to hear if she caught anybody.

"Caput Draconis," said Percy, and the portrait swung forward to reveal a large round hole in the wall. All the first years scrambled through it, Gregor had to duck his head slightly, and found themselves in the Gryffindor common room. It was a cozy place, decoratively squashy armchairs and couches of red and gold littered the circular room in every which way and a roaring fire was going off in a pit with no smoke escaping.

Percy then ushered the girls through a door which apparently led to their dorms and the boys through another. After a trip up a set of spiral staircases the group of six boys found their beds. There were six four-posters hung with red curtains, one of the beds was nearly twice the size of the others and it was obvious that was meant for Gregor.

The group of boys didn't really talk, all of them too tired from the feasting to have a proper conversation, and they just pulled on their night clothes and fell into bed. Gregor found his bed even more comfortable than the one at home, and likened it to a spell of some sort.

He exhaled into his pillow, the stress of the day dying out quickly, and he drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

Gregor got up early on the morning of September 2nd, an action Hermione also copied, and together they decided to do something both had never really done before; explore. Hogwarts quickly became the most interesting place in the world for Gregor, the castle was absolutely _massive_ yet somehow didn't feel too large. There were exactly a hundred and forty two staircases at Hogwarts; some wide, some narrow, some rickety, some solid, one wouldn't even let Gregor up until he asked politely.

When they determined that that was the staircase that led to the library all exploration took a halt. Gregor couldn't help but snicker in memory of Hermione's face when, upon seeing the huge stacks of books, she actually _drooled._

Classes began in a similar way that the standard muggle school would, not that Gregor had much experience with a standard school curriculum. The professors, as a whole, used their first class to give a broad overview of their subject and a small glimpse of what they'd be learning throughout the year.

History of Magic turned out to be more of a joke than a class; most first years, barring Hermione of course, wrote it off as a free period since the ghostly teacher didn't bother to take role. Professor Binns quite literally taught straight out of the book, and his monotone voice soothed many students into a short nap, Gregor included.

He could have gone without Hermione's lecture about proper classroom behavior though.

Herbology was a very hands-on class, something that Gregor could appreciate. Professor Sprout really seemed to love what she did, the plump woman would joyously skip around the room, her belly bouncing around as she did, and in a fairy godmother-esque way was able to make most of the classroom smile along with the lesson.

Defense the Dark Arts was one of the classes Gregor was looking forward to the most, and to say he was disappointed would be an understatement. The class itself was fine, the book detailed a lot of interesting spells and things to watch out for, but the lectures were impossible to follow. Professor Quirrell had a stutter that was so pronounced he couldn't go two words without fumbling his tongue, and adding that to the garlic smell of the classroom made most of the class hard pressed to find any interest in the subject this year.

That also brought Gregor to sending Sandor over to his mum with his first letter and care package request; he would need some spray deodorant if he was to sit in that room for an hour at a time.

Astronomy was, to put it mildly, strange. Gregor had never watched the stars before, never had much of an interest in astrology aside from stories that involved the naming of stars and constellations, but even with his limited knowledge Gregor could tell that the tools provided for Astronomy were outdated by over a century at the very least.

He decided that it would simply be a class he would coast by on; regardless of what Hermione or his mum would say on the matter.

Charms was what Gregor had been looking forward to the most, mainly because it was Professor Flitwick's class. The subject as a whole was somewhat difficult for him, but the many uses in everyday life that charms provided gave Gregor the motivation to learn the subject matter as well as he could.

Transfiguration was a class that surprised him, pleasantly at that. He didn't have much of an interest in the course on its own but when a cat on Professor McGonagalls desk turned into Professor McGonagall herself and then proceeded to berate Weasley and Potter for being late?

Gregor was hooked in an instant.

He remembered her opening speech very clearly, almost fondly. "Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she said. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back."

She then split the class into pairs; Neville with Hermione, Seamus with Dean, Potter with Weasley, Lavender with Parvati and Gregor found himself paired with a Scottish girl named Fay Dunbar. After explaining the assignment and giving all of the pairs a couple of match to work on, she walked around the room and looked over the students desks at random.

Gregor didn't understand why, but he found the assignment rather easy. He could tell by looking at Fay that he seemed to be alone in this. He was able to change the shape of the match on his first try. On his second, he was able to turn the sharpened match silver. On his third attempt he turned the match into a needle.

He earned ten points to Gryffindor and found a new niche by the end of class.

And then there was, Potions. He knew that Professor Snape didn't care who was paired with who, an older girl named Alicia Spinnet was very clear on that, so the moment the classroom door was opened Gregor grabbed Hermione by the shoulder and snatched a spot with her. She was a tad put out, not having been a fan of the manhandling, but she grudgingly didn't do anything aside from giving Gregor the Look.

Professor Snape came into class a few minutes later, and after calling role and landing on Harry Potter's name began to grill into the kid. Gregor only know the question involving the Bezoar, and even then the book said it was in his emergency kit not in the stomach of a goat.

He pitied Potter at that moment.

When Professor Snape told the class to write down what he was grilling the poor kid about, Gregor, smartly, pulled out a pen and notepad and jotted it down.

"Clegane!" Professor Snape barked, "What is _that?_ "

Gregor blinked a few times, not certain as to what the hook nosed man was referring to until he saw the man staring balefully at his notepad. "Pen and paper sir."

"You were told to bring a quill and parchment, not some muggle nonsense. Put that away."

"But sir! I only brought these to class." He tried to use a quill and parchment but his writing would come out blotchy and substandard; it only made sense to go into a note-heavy class such a Potions with a pen.

Professor Snape offered a sneer and strode to the front of the blackboard, grabbing a piece of chalk and writing quickly. "If I see those muggle contraptions when I finish writing on the board I will vanish them and dock you five points."

Gregor grumbled but put his things back in his bag, Hermione kindly offered him a spare parchment and quill.

"Oh," Professor Snape, "And two points from Gryffindor for not being prepared."

It was official, Gregor hated Professor Snape.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

 **A/N: So, that's that. For those of you savvy GoT fans, yes I did physically base Gregor off of Gregor Clegane from the show and books. The books describe him as nearly 8 feet tall, and I was like "Huh… That'd work for a quarter-giant." Gregor Clegane from GoT was an absolutely terrible human being though, and while my Gregor isn't going to be all sunshine and daisies the only thing I want my character to share with** _ **that**_ **Gregor is a name and body.**

 **This is a rewrite of a fic I made called Born of Earth. My intention was for this to be my first attempt at a more serious fic. Naturally I don't do serious very well so there will be some comedy and satirical bits thrown in at random, but I wanted this to be something different from my usual tripe. I could have gone the simple route and just written about Harry Potter, but I wanted to write an OC! My intention isn't to derale cannon or add my own major twists, the books did just fine in my opinion and there's no reason to drastically change them. But the Potterverse is absolutely** ** _massive!_** **There's so much potential here that for me to ignore said potential just feels wrong. It's far too common for people to purely focus on Harry or Hermione or Voldemort or, for some strange reason, Ron and I want to escape that mold.**

 **Cannon will still happen, it may not happen exactly as it did in the books, but it will, as a whole, reflect what we know came out of the noggin of Rowling.**

 **As always, if you liked this story please Favorite/Follow and send me a Review. This story, I would greatly appreciate some solid feedback for, it's new territory for me and I want to make sure I do the series justice.**


	2. II

**Here's the second chapter, hopefully some interesting stuff will come up and it'll be a change from what you would normally read in the first bits of a Harry Potter story by using an unusual perspective and show more unexplored regions of magic.**

 **Also, I'd like to apologize if you guys saw an update yesterday. I didn't like how the first chapter ended and added some dialogue, but Fanfiction went a little wacko and forced me to delete the first chapter and upload my updated version of it in a weird way.**

TTTTTTTTTTTT

 _Hogwarts Great Hall, September 23_ _rd_ _._

Gregor piled food onto his breakfast plate with a smile on his face. He was the only first year at Gryffindor table that was up yet, and only a small smattering of upper years were around as well. The food at Hogwarts was truly of high quality and Gregor loved it, his size made it so he had to eat more than the average elev- _twelve_ year old boy.

He nearly forgot it was his birthday, that's how wonderfully distracting Hogwarts was.

Truthfully, today wasn't his actual birthday; nobody knew what the actual date of his birth was aside from his birth parents. But since it was the day he was brought to Leopold House as an infant it only made sense to consider it such. It wasn't like the date truly mattered all that much, prior to becoming a Clegane the only thing his birthday meant was that he was getting farther and farther away from that toddler period adoptees preferred.

Hermione interrupted his train of thought by taking a sit on his right, a pile of books in her arms and a tired look in her eyes. She'd taken to spending the majority of her time inside the Hogwarts library when they weren't taking a look through the school.

She daintily started putting food onto her plate, only small bits like bacon and eggs unlike Gregor's high stack of pancakes and grabbed a pot of steaming coffee. Gregor found the stuff to be nasty and could never understand why people would subject themselves to the bitter drink only for a pick-me-up when they could simply have some tea and be done with it. But, he knew not to vocalize those thoughts to Hermione; especially after his mum snapped at him for asking a similar question a year ago, before she had her morning cup.

When Hermione took a sip of the coffee she let out a small sigh and turned to Gregor, her eyes wider and more awake. "Good morning Gregor."

"Morning." He greeted in turn, giving her a small smile and bringing his attention back to his pancakes.

"I'll never understand how you can eat that much."

"I'm-" he paused to swallow his food. He had no interest in giving her a show like Weasley would to anybody that spoke to him when food was nearby. "I'm a growing boy!"

She rolled her eyes, "Obviously." She gave his stomach a pointed look and turned to her own plate.

Gregor chuckled at that, he found Hermione to be a fairly fun girl when she wasn't talking about schoolwork. She had difficulties when it came to making friends, just as Gregor did, but when she made one she was an entertaining friend to be sure.

If only she'd stop trying to force him into the library for so many hours of the day.

Sandor, his mum's owl, came down not a moment later with a large empty bag and a letter tied to his leg. Gregor quickly traded a piece of bacon from Hermione's plate, which caused her to squawk in indignation, for the both of them. He read the letter first, knowing that the only one that had access to Sandor was his mum.

 _Gregor,_

 _Happy Birthday son! Twelve already? My, how time flies._

 _I'm sad that we won't be able to have our day off together, I have always enjoyed that and will miss it dearly._

 _So, news first. With you going to Hogwarts I've found myself to be bored all of a sudden. I know it's only been a few weeks, but it's true all the same. I've decided to start looking for a job, part time since I don't want to miss my morning soaps of course. There's a position at the local Primary School that opened up and I'm hoping to get it._

 _But, I'm sure that you don't much care about that. So, let's talk presents!_

 _First, on your request, I bring you a can of spray deodorant. You'll be needing it soon enough anyways, I've a feeling you'll be hitting puberty early._

 _Second, I did in fact read and listen to your complaints about Professor Snape. While I myself think his words were harsh, he's a teacher and he has the right to dictate what you use in his class. I do however agree that writing with a quill and inkwell is silly. So, to help you I went to Diagon Alley through our floo, the address is_ The Mountain _by the way_ , _and in Flourish and Blotts found just the thing. They're called self-inking-ever-neat quills that have something called an unbreakable charm on them, they write exactly like a pen does. I bought you two so don't lose them!_

 _You'll find them inside the bag. Looks empty, doesn't it? I got it at Gringotts, it's a bag with an expansion charm on it, like the one in Professor Flitwick's breast pocket from when he delivered your letter. Clever bit of magic that. The goblin that sold it to me told me it can hold fifty kilos! I put the deodorant and quills in it and put a few Galleons in it too; you never know when you'll need some pocket change._

 _Please write me more often._

 _Love,_

 _Mum_

Gregor found himself grinning by the time he finished the letter. The can of spray deodorant was a plus, as were the quills and Galleons, but best of all was that his mum _got him a Bag of Holding!_

Best birthday present ever.

She also got the floo system linked up. That was good; it meant they didn't have to drive half an hour to get to the Leaky Cauldron. The address was funny in a sort, he knew his Mum had been a huge fan of the Hobbit growing up and confided that she wanted to live in the Lonely Mountain when she was a girl.

"What's all that?" Hermione asked, softly stroking Sandor's head as she spoke.

"Birthday card."

"Happy birthday!" she said, her voice high and her smile wide and Gregor found his ears turning red. He wasn't used to people wishing him such aside from his mum and the occasional tutor.

He abruptly stopped blushing, his mind thinking hard but coming up with no answer when it came to his friend. "Hermione, when's your birthday?" it was weird that he didn't know something so basic.

She blinked, not expecting the question. "September 19th."

"What!" Gregor blurted out, his eyes wide. "Why didn't you tell me?!" That was four days ago! He might not have had anything to give her but he could have at least wished her a proper happy birthday!

She found herself blushing too, her cheeks instead of her ears. "Well," she said, tucking a few strands of her bushy brown hair behind her ear. "It never came up."

Gregor studied her with narrowed eyes before offering a harrumph. He grabbed his Bag of Holding, dug an arm inside, which made Hermione open her mouth wide, and pull out his two new quills. He handed her one with a grin, "Happy _belated_ birthday."

She took it with a small, confused smile on her face and when Gregor explained what it was her smile turned into a wide white grin and she gave Gregor a full bodied hug.

They finished their meals soon after, both with smiles still on their faces and split up. Hermione needed to return her rentals to the library and Gregor needed to write a thank you letter for Sandor to take back to his mum.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

After Potions class, where Professor Snape finally chose to ignore Gregor due to his having written properly using a quill and turned his full ire onto Potter, Gregor learned from Seamus that the Gryffindor and Slytherin first years would be having flying lesson together. Gregor thought it strange that Gryffindor would be paired with Slytherin for this, but he supposed that evened out the classes. Gryffindors only had to do with Slytherins during Potions. Their other class combinations had Hufflepuff in History, Herbology and Defence while Ravenclaw took Charms, Transfiguration and Astronomy with Gryffindor.

Gregor couldn't help but be excited for flying class, though he was equally nervous; something Hermione also felt. When she returned her books to the library she came back with one called _Quidditch Through the Ages_ in hopes that it would shed some light on how flying worked. Unfortunately it didn't really have anything aside from the occasional obscure tip but she held onto those obscurities like a lifeline and spewed them out for the whole of the Gryffindor first years to hear during lunch; only Neville seemed to be listening to her words.

At half past three in the afternoon the Gryffindors made their way down to the grounds for their flying lesson. It was a clear, breezy day and the grass rippled under their feet as they marched down the sloping lawns towards a smooth, flat bed of grass that stood opposite to the forbidden forest.

The Slytherins were already there, and so were about twenty broomsticks lying in neat rows on the grass. Gregor remembered listening in on the Weasley twins complaining about school brooms, saying that some of them would vibrate if you flew to high or always skewed left when in the air.

Madam Hooch arrived soon after, her yellow eyes trailing on the first years like a hawk. "Well, what are you all waiting for?" she barked. "Everybody stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up."

The students took their places at random. Gregor took the end of the row and looked at his broom, frowning when he noticed some twigs stuck out at odd angles.

"Stick out your right hand over your broom," called Madam Hooch at the front, "and say 'Up!'"

Gregor positions his right hand over the broom and hesitantly called out an "UP!" that his fellow first years echoed.

The broom barely moved.

He frowned, an idea coming to mind. "Madam Hooch?" he called and the teacher turned to him with a raised eyebrow. "What if you're left handed?" It was a bit of a sore point of his, another thing that made him different from most folk; a tolerable difference to be sure but a difference none the less.

She took a moment to speak, her hawk like gaze catching the attention of all the students that didn't get their broom in hand. "If you're left handed use your left hand. Brooms are like horses or dogs, they'll know if you're afraid so use whichever hand you're most comfortable with. Keep your voices firm and don't let any nervousness show."

Gregor nodded and switched positions, something that Blaise Zabini also did. He cleared his throat and spoke as clearly as he could, "UP!"

The broom slapped his hand soundly and Gregor couldn't help but let out a grin, his hazel eyes lighting up in glee.

He had to wait for a few minutes for the rest of the class to have their brooms in hand, but when they did Madam Hooch showed the class how to mount their brooms properly and walked up and down the rows, correcting any wrong grips. He couldn't help but snicker when she told Malfoy he'd been doing it wrong for years, something both Potter and Weasley seemed to agree with if their blatant amusement was anything to go by.

"Now," Madam Hooch said. "When I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard. Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and the come straight back down by leaning forward slightly. On my whistle – three – two – "

Neville, however, chose to go off at two and pushed off hard before the whistle came to Madam Hooch's lips.

"Come back, boy!" she shouted, but Neville was rising straight up like a cork shot out of a bottle. Gregor blinked as Neville went right over him, the other students were scattering away from what was likely to be a crash zone. Neville fell down only a few feet away, his chubby body making it seem like he was falling faster and Gregor moved without thinking. He dove down, catching the smaller boy in his arms and rolled around on the grass; ignoring the small red sphere that fell from Neville's pocket. His right thumb stung horribly and was quickly turning purple and had bent at an odd angle while Neville was whimpering and holding his red and swollen wrist, but they were safe and sound as a whole.

Madam Hooch came barreling over, a frown on her face when looking at Neville and approving eyes when looking at Gregor. "Come up boys, good show. Longbottom, two points from Gryffindor for going without my signal. Clegane, ten points to Gryffindor for saving your classmate from what could have been a fatal injury." She took a look at both of them, "Broken thumb and a sprained wrist, nothing too bad but worth a visit to Madam Pomfrey." She got up, dusted off her robes and motioned for both Gregor and Neville to do the same.

She turned the rest of the class, most of whom were wide eyed at what they just saw occur.

"None of you is to move while I take these boys to the hospital wing! You leave those brooms where they are or you'll be out of Hogwarts before you can say 'Quidditch.' Come on dears."

Neville had tears rolling down his face as he clutched his wrist and hobbled off with Madam Hooch who had an arm around him. Gregor was to the other side of the flying instructor, holding his right hand and looking at his oddly bent thumb with a frown on his face. He'd broken bones before, fingers more than anything when boxing, but it was still strange that he could barely feel the broken bone in question when he _knew_ should have felt immense pain.

Madam Hooch led them through the staircases and halls until they found their way to the hospital wing. Gregor had never been here before, he assumed Neville hadn't either, and it was always interesting for Gregor to explore new places in Hogwarts.

If only he'd come here under different circumstances.

Madam Pomfrey was a nice woman with long grey hair tied up in a bun and kind blue eyes, but she was equally strict. The moment that Madam Hooch brought Gregor and Neville inside the clinic Madam Pomfrey quickly got the situation from the flying instructor and shooed her out. She pulled out her wand and hovered it over Neville's wrist, the redness and swelling went down in a near instant and she gave him a potion to take, which he downed with a shudder, and sent him on his way.

She turned to Gregor and beckoned him over. "Take a sit," she said, pointing at a wooden chair next to a hospital cot. Gregor did so, and she held a hand out. Mutely, he gave her his right hand and she turned it so that his broken thumb was facing her. She clicked her tongue and pulled out her wand, "This will likely hurt, but the bone needs to be put back into place before I can heal the break."

Without waiting for his approval or disapproval she snapped her wand at the thumb and Gregor sucked in his breath when the thumb was put back into place, swollen and an angry purple though it was; he _definitely_ felt that. Madam Pomfrey then did the same thing with her wand that she did to Neville and the swelling and coloring returned to normal. Unlike Neville however she then grabbed a thin strip of gauze and dabbed a strange pink paste on it and wrapped it around Gregor's thumb.

"What's that?" Gregor smartly asked, his curiosity overcoming his pain.

"It's meant to make the swelling stay away. Unlike the other boy, who only sprained his wrist in one way, you broke your thumb in three ways. I've healed it but there will be continual swelling if this paste isn't covering your thumb."

She finished wrapping the gauze around his thumb and nodded sharply, "Come to me tomorrow and we'll take it off, you should be right as rain at that point." She then waved a hand towards the door, "Go on to your next class or wherever you need to be. You can ask Madam Hooch or a student for flying help later, but you won't be grabbing anything with that hand for the rest of the day."

"No potion?" Gregor knew Neville took one, and his injury was smaller than his was.

Madam Pomfrey shook her head, "I gave the other boy-"

"Neville," Gregor corrected absentmindedly, closing his mouth shut when he saw the stern look on the healers face.

"I gave _Neville_ a potion because he has low pain tolerance. You however have a very high pain tolerance if your reaction to when I righted your thumb was anything to go by. Unless you want the potion? It works well but tastes quite a bit like cherry flavored horse dung."

He quickly shook his head and made his way out of the hospital wing, his ears pink. He had free period for the rest of the day. He paused, needing to take a moment to figure out where he should go, and soon enough squared his shoulders and made way to the library.

Hermione was likely to show up there soon enough, and he had to write up a Potions paper regardless.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

After his stint to the hospital wing and his trip to the library, where he was able to finish half of his Potions paper, Hermione came in with a wild look in her eyes. The first thing she did was admonish Gregor, then went on to say she'd never seen anything more dashing in her life. They spent the rest of their time in the library, finishing up their papers – Hermione offered to edit – and talking about what Gregor missed in the flying lesson. He was sad that he couldn't be there to watch the show.

He may not have liked Potter all that much, truthfully Gregor didn't really know him all too well since he spent all his time with Weasley, but Gregor could appreciate the guy giving Malfoy a proper smack in the arse.

When they finished up their work it was nearly time for supper. They made their way to the Great Hall, Hermione said she needed to make a quick stop at her dorm so Gregor told her he'd save her a seat. It was strange, in a nice way, for his fellow Gryffindors to pat him on the back and wish him well for his saving Neville; apparently the tale grew far wilder as more people spoke of it. Angelina Johnson even asked him if he really did use wandless magic to save Neville's life from a one hundred foot drop.

He had no words to that, so he just stared at her until she went red and muttered a "Sorry for the dumb question."

He made a plate of chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy and was just about to dig in when Hermione came to his side in an angry huff.

"You will not _believe_ what I just heard." she said angrily as she stabbed hard at a pork chop and put it on her plate with none of the calm Gregor usually associated with his friend.

"And what wouldn't I believe?" Gregor hadn't ever seen Hermione angry before, annoyed yes but never angry, so whatever happened must have well and truly set her off.

She had to pinch the bridge of her nose and count backwards from ten to one aloud before she began her tale, "Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley."

Gregor made a face, knowing this was likely not going to something fun and motioned for her to continue while stuffing a spoonful of potatoes in his mouth.

"I had just come back from my dorm, I needed to drop off the books I rented from the library, and made my way into the Great Hall when I overheard them talking to Malfoy at the table. Words were spoken and Malfoy challenged Harry to a wizard's duel."

Upon noticing Gregor's confused look she elaborated, "It's essentially a fight with honor on the line using magic. A wizard or witch that feels they've been wronged in some way or form will challenge another and the winner gets to dictate a term, usually it's just a public apology but I've read some cases where winners took valuables as reparation."

Gregor nodded and she continued what she was saying before, "So naturally Weasley-" she didn't much care for the ginger either "-accepts in Harry's place and calls himself his second, which is somebody that can tag in if the duel gets too out of hand. Malfoy named Crabbe his own second and said they'd meet up in the trophy room at _midnight!"_

"But we've got curfew." Gregor protested lightly. He didn't want either Weasley or Potter to lose the points he'd broken his thumb for.

"I _know._ I told them it was a bad idea, that they should think of Gryffindor if they got caught, but they wouldn't listen! They just told me to shove off and that it wasn't any of my business! The nerve of those- those _prats_!" She ranted, her hand furiously stabbing a fork into the pork chop on her plate.

Gregor stared at her with wide eyes, never before had he heard her so enraged and never in a million years would he have expected her to curse. She was normally such a prim and proper girl with a penchant towards bossiness, but she'd always been calm even when annoyed.

He decided then and there that he would never want to be the focus of her ire.

"Well," he started conversationally, taking a sip of his pumpkin juice and making a face at the overly sweet drink. "We'll just have to stop them."

She paused her furiously stabbing of her pork chop and turned her eyes onto him. "Have I ever told you you're my best friend?"

TTTTTTTTTTTT

At half past eleven Gregor heard Weasley muttering to Potter from their dorm and, after both put on bathrobes and grabbed their wands, they made their way out. He quickly got up; he was in his standard sleep attire of sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, put on a pair on slippers and followed them. The common room was empty save for Hermione, who was sitting in one of the darker corners in her pink nightgown that caused Gregor to snigger quietly.

Hermione ignored Gregor, her cheeks were matching her choice of nightwear, and called out to Potter and Weasley who were nearing the portrait hole, "I can't believe you're going to do this, Harry."

Her lamp flickered on and both Hermione and Gregor were met with the surprised face of Potter and the quickly angering face of Weasley.

" _You!_ " said Weasley. "Go back to bed!"

"I almost told your brother," Hermione snapped, one of the veins in her forehead was twitching as she spoke. "Percy, he's a prefect, he'd put a stop to this."

Potter looked at her darkly before turning back to the portrait hole, "Come on," he said the Weasley. He pushed open the portrait of the Fat Lady and climbed through the hole.

Hermione let out a smattering of none-too-kind words, straightened her shoulders and followed the pair of idiots. Gregor quickly followed her; he had to make sure she didn't get hurt if there really _was_ a duel going on. Malfoy was likely to hit her with a spell purely because she was a muggleborn and would claim it was bad aim on his part and that she shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Not that he should have been there either.

"Don't you _care_ about Gryffindor, do you _only_ care about yourselves?! _I_ don't want Slytherin to win the house cup, and you'll lose all the points I got from Professor McGonagall for knowing about Switching Spells." She hissed at them, her voice quickly losing whatever calm remained.

"Go away," Potter said.

"I don't want you to lose the points I broke a thumb for either." Gregor said, he was much calmer than Hermione in the way he spoke but his tone was equally forceful.

Weasley paused a step and turned his head only slightly, "Greg-" how he _hated_ it when people called him Greg "-you're fine, mate. Just head on back to the dorms and we'll tell you all about how we knocked Malfoy to the ground."

Gregor sorely wanted to knock the gingers teeth out at that moment.

He grabbed Hermione by the wrist, and when she looked at him mutinously he shook his head. "Fine, but the moment you two get caught we'll be happy to tell your brothers all about it, Weasley. I'm _sure_ they'll be thrilled, the twins anyway."

Weasley looked like he just swallowed a lemon and Gregor found himself grinning inwardly. He turned around, ready to get back to bed, only to find the portrait of the Fat Lady missing a Fat Lady. He blinked, turned to Hermione who was equally befuddled, and turned around once more only to see the retreating figures of Potter and Weasley.

They quickly took the situation in and decided it was better to follow and point the finger if necessary than to stand outside the empty portrait for the rest of the night.

"We're coming with you," Hermione said as she jogged past the corner the boys took.

"You are _not_."

"D'you think I'm going to stand out here and wait for Filch to catch me? If he finds all four of us, Gregor and I will tell him the truth, that we were trying to stop you, and you can back us up."

"You've got some nerve-" Weasley said.

"If you back us up your brothers won't hear any of what happened from us," Gregor cut him off.

"Shut up, all of you!" Potter said sharply. "I heard something."

It was some sort of snuffling.

"Mrs. Norris?" Weasley questioned in a whisper, his eyes were squinting and he fearfully took a step back.

It turned out that it wasn't Mrs. Norris. It _was_ , however, Neville. He was curled up in a ball of his robes on the floor, fast asleep with a bit of drool coming out of his mouth. Gregor none-too-gently tapped the boy with his foot, and Neville jerked suddenly awake.

"Thank goodness you found me! I've been out here for hours; couldn't remember the new password to get in to bed-"

Potter cut him off quick enough, "Keep your voice down, Neville. The password's 'Pig snout' but it won't help you now. The Fat Lady's gone off somewhere."

Neville looked down at his feet, sniffling a tad, and Potter tried to change the subject. "How's your arm?"

"Fine," Neville said, showing them. "Madam Pomfrey mended it in about a minute. How about your thumb, Gregor?"

He in turn showed the bandaged limb, "She healed it up but needed to wrap it for the night so it wouldn't swell. Says I'll be fine by tomorrow."

Weasley coughed into his sleeve awkwardly, "Good. Well, look, Neville, we've got to be somewhere, we'll see you later-"

"Don't leave me!" Neville said, scrambling to his feet. "I don't want to stay her alone; the Bloody Baron's been past twice already."

Weasley looked at his watch then glared furiously at Hermione, Neville and Gregor.

"If any of you get us caught, I'll never rest until I've learned that Curse of the Bogies Quirrell told us about and used it on you."

Hermione opened her mouth, likely to tell Weasley how the curse was used, but Gregor quickly put his large hand over it just as Potter shushed the lot of the group and beckoned them forward. They went through the corridors as quietly as they could; Potter looked like he expected to run into Filch or Mrs. Norris at every turn. They sprinted up a staircase to the third floor and tiptoed toward the trophy room.

Malfoy and Crabbe weren't there yet, making the large circular room look even larger. The crystal trophy cases glimmered whenever moonlight touched them. Gregor had a feeling in his gut that this was all a sham, a waste of time, so he decided to check out the trophies in the room so that he could at least get _something_ out of following Potter and Weasley aside from a detention; he'd yet to look at this part of Hogwarts with the ban on the third floor corridor in effect.

He paused when he came across a certain picture, and rose a brow when he read the plaque that accompanied it.

"Oi, Potter." Gregor whispered to the smaller boy, "Found your dad. The picture says he was a Chaser for Gryffindor from '74 through '78. Head boy too."

Potter blinked behind his glasses and his eyes went wide, all thoughts of his upcoming duel lost as he looked at the picture with some kind of reverence. Gregor could sympathize, if only somewhat. He didn't know Potter much, but the kid was an orphan regardless and Gregor knew what that was like all too well.

"He's late, maybe he chickened out." Weasley whispered happily, snapping Potter out of his reverie.

A noise in the next room suddenly hit their ears and the quintet jumped and started in response. Potter had his wand out and Gregor took his boxing stance, cursing himself for not bringing his wand. The noise turned into a voice – and it wasn't Malfoy's voice, Crabbe's neither.

"Sniff around, my sweet, they might be lurking in a corner."

Gregor knew that voice, if only in passing. It was Filch, likely speaking to Mrs. Norris.

Potter grabbed Gregor and Weasley by the sleeve, Neville and Hermione were nearby and equally scared, and urgently whispered, "This way!" and led them down a long gallery full of suits of armor. The group could hear Filch getting nearer. Neville suddenly let out a frightened squeak and broke into a run and tripped, grabbing Weasley around the waste in hopes of getting some balance.

The pair of them toppled right into a suit of armor; the clanging and crashing were enough to wake the whole castle.

"RUN!" Potter yelled, throwing caution to the wind. The five sprinted down the gallery, not looking back to see whether or not Filch was on their tail. They swung around a doorpost and ran down one corridor then another with Potter in the lead and likely no idea where he was going. He tripped on his shoelace into a tapestry, only for the painting to shimmer out of existence and make way for a hidden passageway that seemed to lead to the Charms classroom, which should have been impossible since it was on the other side of the school.

 _Magic is great_ Gregor thought as the tapestry painting shimmered back into existence from behind him.

"I think we've lost him," Potter panted, leaning against the cold wall and wiping his forehead. Neville was bent doubled over, wheezing and spluttering. Gregor was out of breath just as they were, but Neville looked as if he'd just run a marathon.

"I _told_ you," Hermione gasped, clutching at her chest. "I. Told. You."

"We've got to get back to Gryffindor tower," Weasley said, ignoring Hermione without missing a beat. "Quickly as possible."

"Malfoy tricked you," Hermione said to Potter. "You realize that, don't you? He was never going to meet you- Filch knew someone was going to be in the trophy room, Malfoy must have tipped him off."

Potter scowled at her and jerked his head forward, "Let's go."

Naturally something worse than Filch soon came upon them. They hadn't walked more than a dozen steps before a door to the side opened wide. It was Peeves and, by the squeal of delight he gave, Gregor knew they weren't going to like whatever the poltergeist had up his sleeve.

"Shut up, Peeves, please, you'll get us thrown out" Potter pleaded.

Peeves just cackled.

"Wandering around at midnight, Ickle Firsties? Tut, tut, tut. Naughty, naughty, you'll get caughty."

"Not if you don't give us away, Peeves, please." Potter tried once more.

"Should tell Filch, I should," said Peeves in a saintly voice, his eyes glittering wickedly. "It's for your own good, you know."

"Get out of the way," Weasley snapped, taking a swipe at Peeves.

Gregor felt his body go still; there was no way what Weasley just tried could end well.

"STUDENTS OUT OF BED!" Peeve bellowed. "STUDENTS OUT OF BED DOWN THE CHARMS CORRIDOR!"

He hated it when he was right sometimes.

Ducking under Peeves, the quintet ran for their lives, right to the end of the corridor where they slammed into a locked door.

"This is it!" Weasley moaned, as they pushed and pulled helplessly at the door, "We're done for! This is the end!"

Footsteps were echoing down the hall, Filch was running as fast as he could towards the shouting specter.

"Oh, move over," Hermione snarled, her hair frizzing with her stress. She snatched Potter's wand right out of his hand, tapped the lock and whispered as strongly as she could _"Alohomora!"_

The lock clicked and the door swung open and they piled through it and shut it not a second later and pressed their ears against it, listening.

"Which way did they go, Peeves?" Filch said, his voice muffled through the door. "Quick, tell me."

"Say 'please.'"

"Don't mess with me, Peeves, now _where did they go?_ "

"Shan't say nothing if you don't say please."

"All right, _please_."

"NOTHING! Ha! Haaa! Told you, I wouldn't say nothing if you didn't say please! Ha ha! Haaaaaa!" The sound of Peeves whooshing away and Filch cursing in rage filled the groups ears until they heard nothing but Flich's footsteps going away from their door.

"He thinks this door is locked," Potter whispered. "I think we'll be okay- get _off,_ Neville!" Neville had been tugging at the sleeve of Potter's bathrobe for the last minute or so, " _What?_ "

Potter turned, as did Gregor, and saw, quite clearly, something that should not have been. It was like the world was against them, there was just too much _bad_ that happened on this night.

Gregor vowed never to follow Potter and Weasley out at night ever again.

He stared straight into the eyes of a monstrous brown dog whose body filled the whole space between ceiling and floor. It had three heads, which instantly brought Gregor back to his old Greek Mythology tales; namely that of the Cerberus. Each head had a pair of huge brown eyes, a lighter color than the beasts' fur, and, most disturbingly, three mouths that each began to drool as the beasts eyes surveyed the group of five.

It was standing quite still, all six eyes staring at them, and Gregor felt that the only reason they weren't being attacked yet was because their sudden appearance took it by surprise.

He could hear Hermione opening the door from behind, so he went with his gut and tried to talk to the clearly angry beast the same way he would any normal dog.

Most dogs stayed away from him due of his size, so his experience with them was highly limited.

"Down! Bad! Stay, uh- um- Fluffy! Stay Fluffy!" He knew nobody would be stupid enough to name a beast like this such a common name, but surprisingly the dog just whined pitifully and shuffled further into the back of the room it occupied; away from the door. Gregor held out his hand and backed away slowly, "Good boy- Stay! Good boy!"

He left the room and closed the door quickly, Hermione locking it with a spell an instant later. He turned to the group, their eyes were just as wide as his and it was silently and unanimously decided that now would be a perfect time to return to the Gryffindor dorms. They ran as fast as they could, a goal in mind now that they knew where they were, and after nearly five minutes of nonstop running found their way to the Fat Lady's portrait on the seventh floor.

"Where on earth have you all been?" she asked, looking at the clothes sticking to their skin and their sweat covered faces.

"Never mind that- pig snout, pig snout," Potter urged and the portrait swung forward in turn. They scrambled into the common room and collapsed soon after, trembling into the armchairs. Hermione seemed to need something physical and found her way to Gregors side, holding his arm like a lifeline.

It was a while before any of them started speaking again, seemingly hours when they knew it was likely just a few minutes.

"What do you think they're doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school?" Weasley asked. "If any dog needs exercise, that one does."

Hermione quickly shot a glare at him; the small amount of composure she had regained broke quickly. "You don't use your eyes, any of you, do you?" she snapped. "Didn't you see what it was standing on?"

"The floor?" Potter sarcastically suggested. "I wasn't looking at its feet, I was too busy with the heads."

"No, _not_ the floor. It was standing on a trapdoor. It's obviously guarding something."

She stood up randomly, her hand combing through her thoroughly frizzed hair, and turned to Gregor. "What do you think?"

He was silent, had been ever since they left the room with the Cerberus. He'd been thinking furiously, questions such as _why it was there?_ and _where it came_ _from?_ filled his brain. More than that however, he wondered why the dog acted so docile. Was it trained? Was Hermione right, and that it was guarding something?

He didn't know any of that, but he knew one thing for certain.

"I want one."

She blinked, "Want one what?"

"The dog, I want one."

She stared at him silently, her mouth working but no sound came out until she grabbed a pillow from the chair she stood from and screamed into it. She tossed the pillow at Gregors head and stormed up to her dorm without saying another word.

"Mental that one." Weasley couldn't help but add after a moment of blissful quiet.

Gregor threw the pillow at his face, hard.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

The month of September and October passed in relative quiet when compared to their night adventure on Gregor's birthday. It took Hermione a full three days before she returned to Gregor's side.

She took his comment about wanting a Cerberus especially hard, muttering about boys and idiots constantly under her breath. She pointedly refused to speak to both Potter and Weasley for as long as she could, and Gregor could tell that they were quite gladdened by this.

Nothing much happened in Hogwarts in the passing weeks, the only thing of relative interest came in the form of his mum blatantly telling him that _"No, Gregor, you cannot have a Cerberus. I don't care if it listens to you, I will not feed a mouth, or mouths in this case, that can swallow me whole"_ and Potter getting some weird package that had to be carried by six owls. It took a bit of digging, really all Gregor did was eavesdrop on Weasley from their shared dorm, but he learned that it was in fact a Nimbus Two Thousand, a broomstick that cost over 100 Galleons.

Gregor had to wonder who Potter tricked into buying it for him, possibly the author of the Harry Potter adventure books.

He knew how Quidditch worked, he had read _Quidditch Through the Ages_ when Hermione rented the book for their first flying lesson. One Keeper, one Seeker, three Chasers and two Beaters. All of the positions were filled for Gryffindor aside from Seeker, and the only way Potter wouldn't get in trouble for having a broomstick came in the form of being a Quidditch player.

Gregor didn't really have any kind words to that, so he wisely kept his mouth shut.

He'd also been hearing more people whispering none-too-quietly behind his back lately, saying that same word over and over again: Mixedblood. He didn't know what it meant, Hermione didn't either, and he was slowly going mad. Finally, in the early bits of October, he went to Professor Flitwick after class and asked the diminutive professor what it meant.

Professor Flitwick had a dark look on his face, muttered some words under his breath, and told Gregor that he would tell him after he prepared some things and shooed him out. Gregor pestered the small man for days at a time, but he would not budge and simply told the tall boy to wait until the preparations were finished.

And then Halloween came.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

Gregor piled into Professor Flitwick's class once again with Hermione at his side. Today they would be learning how to make objects fly, and the whole of the class was excited for the lesson after they saw Professor Flitwick make Neville's toad fly around the class the other day.

"Now," Professor Flitwick said from atop a tower of books as Potter and Weasley were, once again, the last to enter the class. "Today we will be learning the levitation charm, a simple yet extremely useful bit of magic to be sure. However, I want to change things up a bit today." He waved his wand at the blackboard and all of the names of the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw first years appeared; lines stretching at random from one name to another. "The names these lines are connected to will tell you who will be paired with who for the rest of today's class."

Gregor squinted at the board. Potter got paired with Seamus, Neville got paired with Lavender, Dean got paired with a Ravenclaw called Terry Boot, Parvati got paired with her sister, Gregor found his name attached to a Ravenclaw named Su Li and-

And Hermione got paired with Weasley.

Gregor could _see_ the annoyance overcoming her features, and he could easily hear the groan coming from Potter and Weasley's seats.

"Now, up class, up! Go to your partners, if you've never met introduce yourselves and we'll start the lesson in a few minutes."

Gregor smiled apologetically at Hermione, stood up and made his way over to the Ravenclaw tables. Some of them squeaked upon his arrival and Su Li, a small Chinese girl with her hair stuck in a bun, looked as wide eyes as her features permitted. He took his seat and introduced himself, Su Li doing so in tern with a small stutter, and she studiously ignored Gregor when he tried to strike up a conversation.

Professor Flitwick then floated a single feather in front of every pair of students and began his lecture, "The incantation, the magic words, for the levitation charm is Wingardium Leviosa, which is translates to 'lift up high.' The charm was crafted in the sixteenth century by a wizard named Jarleth Hobart, I highly recommend to you all to look him up."

The Ravenclaw's in the room all nodded seriously, as did Hermione. Weasley had the audacity to yawn theatrically from next to her.

"Now don't forget that nice wrist movement we've been practicing!" Professor Flitwick squeaked, perched on his pile of books. "Swish and flick, remember, swish and flick. And saying the magic words properly is very important too, never forget Wizard Baruffio, who said S instead of F and found himself on the floor with a buffalo on his chest."

If History of Magic were as interesting as the stories Professor Flitwick told when going over certain spells and individuals Gregor was certain he would have kept awake; most of the time.

The spell was actually quite difficult, Gregor had had the most trouble when they did the color changing charm a couple weeks back, and he found this charm to be no different. Su was able to make it twitch more and more as the class went on.

He found himself furiously staring at the feather. It wouldn't move, nothing he tried made it do so. He said the words right, he knew that for a fact; so why didn't it _work?!_

A moment of clarity hit him then. He was relying too much on the incantation, too much on what it was _supposed_ to do and not what Gregor _wanted_ it to do. It was obvious in a way. Before coming to Hogwarts the only way anything magical would happen is if he got in an accident or if he willed it to happen.

He closed his eyes, focusing purely on the image of the feather in front of him. He saw, in his mind, the feather moving from the desk and into the air, and after _wanting_ to make the actual feather do the same thing he snapped his eyes open he swished and flicked his wrist and spoke so loud Su squeaked, " _Wingardium Leviosa!_ "

His feather rose off the desk an instant and hovered around. Gregor grinned widely, especially when he saw another feather rise up from behind him and it turned out to be Hermione's.

"Oh, well done!" cried Professor Flitwick. "Everyone see here, Miss Granger and Mr. Clegane have done it!"

He gave them both five points to Gryffindor and Gregor found himself finally being spoken to by Su. She asked, with her usual stutter, how he was able to do that. He explained as best he could, and by the end of class she was able to get the feather to hover a foot off their desk.

"Oh," Professor Flitwick said as students were leaving for their next class, "Mr. Clegane, could you stay for a moment?"

"Sure, professor."

When the last of the students filed out of the room Professor Flitwick hopped off his stack of books and made way to his desk. He grabbed a small slip of parchment and his jacket and had Gregor follow him through the door opposite to where the other first year students went on the other side of the Charms classroom.

"You've asked me a good few times this month what the term Mixedblood means," Professor Flitwick began as they walked, and Gregor found his interest immediately held. "And I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to answer. Normally I would just answer your question as it is fairly simple one, but since the question involves you in particular I wanted to make sure that preparations were made so that your question would answer the question likely to come after. I've already informed Professor Snape that you will not be attending his class this afternoon; I'm sure your friend Miss Granger would be willing to share her notes."

Regardless of where they were going, Gregor couldn't help the grin that broke over his face upon learning he would be skipping Potions class without consequence.

For a little over twenty minutes the pair went through various portraits and up and down strange staircases and even went down a chimney chute, until they eventually made their way to a bland stone wall on the fifth floor. Professor Flitwick then offered Gregor the same piece of parchment he grabbed from his desk, "Read this."

Gregor did so, his eyes squinting in order to read the small script.

 _The Ritual Chamber is located in the Ancient Runes corridor on the fifth floor of Hogwarts._

He looked up at Professor Flitwick, intending on asking why he needed to read that, but noticed a thick wooden door suddenly materialize from behind the smaller man.

"The Fidelius charm," Professor Flitwick squeaked, hobbling over to the newly formed door and opening it with a wave of his wand. "A charm that can conceal _any_ secret, be it the location of a simple diary to that of a grand mansion, inside the soul of the person who performs the charm. You won't be learning it any time soon, it's not a part of the Hogwarts curriculum and is a Mastery level charm you see, but it's dead useful. In this case, I inherited the secret of this room from Professor Oblanksi, who taught Charms before I took over, and he inherited it from his predecessor and so on and so forth."

Professor Flitwick then beckoned Gregor to follow him inside. The room was made purely out of stone and there were no windows, all light came from rows of oil lamps. It was large, a few trophy cases littered the back wall and a myriad of books were on display. In the middle of the room was a large wooden pedestal with a square carved into it, the corners of the square made lines that crossed towards the middle of the shape where a curious black symbol lay. Gregor recognized it as one of the runes from his copy of _Book of Rune Secrets_ but couldn't remember what it meant. It looked like a rotated square with the two lines on the bottom sticking out like a bow.

"Othala." A female voice called out from behind Gregor, causing him to jerk upright. "The rune of ancestral spiritual power, divine inheritance, and earthly estate."

She was a fairly pretty woman, with copper hair, tan skin and a charming smiled. She stood tall for a woman and had a book tucked under her arm. Strangely, her black eyes looked distant, she had her head cocked to the side and she stared at Gregor like a piece of freshly cooked meat.

"This is Professor Babbling, who teaches Ancient Runes." Professor Flitwick said.

She wove her hand at Professor Flitwick as if she were trying to swat a bug, "Yes, yes Squeaks. I've wanted to meet Bigs ever since his sorting."

Gregor wasn't sure what to make of this woman, but judging by the strained look on Professor Flitwick's face he could instinctively tell that her off-putting attitude wasn't faked in the slightest.

He's been called worse things than Bigs.

"Anyways," Professor Flitwick said, coughing into his sleeve and turning to the pedestal. "Today we will be having a practical lesson in a very obscure magical art. Tell me Gregor, what do you know of rituals?"

He hadn't known much aside from the fact that they existed; any information on the subject seemed to have been stuffed in the Restricted Section. He told Professor Flitwick just that and the small professor nodded sharply.

"Rituals are dangerous bits of magic involving tedious amounts of preparation, so it's only natural that they be highly monitored and restricted. A ritual is the magic of sacrifice; what you give will determine what you gain. There are two major forms of rituals; Rune based rituals and Potion based rituals. Today we will be performing a Rune based ritual, one that was designed many centuries ago by the goblins and is called the Inheritance of Othala."

"Professor," Gregor started. "I'm interested in all this, don't get me wrong. But I've got to ask, _why_ are we doing this?"

Professor Flitwick grabbed a knife from his expansion charmed jacket pocket and began carving into the wooden podium, on one of the corners of the square. "You asked me why people called you Mixedblood and what a Mixedblood was. A Mixedblood is the common name for a person with creature inheritance, though calling them creatures often leads to an early grave."

He finished his carving and moved on to a different corner of the square. Gregor took a look at what Professor Flitwick made and saw it was a letter of goblin origin; he faintly recognized the word from his Gringotts vault contract.

Professor Flitwick continued speaking as he carved into the wood. "Did you know I'm Mixedblood? My maternal grandfather was a goblin, nasty sort that took my grandmother as a prize when she lost too many Galleons in a bet of some kind. She gave birth to my mother, who became pregnant with me during her work at a Knockturn Alley brothel a couple of decades later; nobody else would hire a half-goblin female. Goblins are a paternal people, they don't respect women in the slightest, but when Gringotts learned I was a _male_ quarter-goblin they scooped me up and sponsored me to go to Hogwarts within the hour."

Gregor stilled, not certain if he liked where this was going. He chose to remain silent, simply staring at the letters Professor Flitwick was inscribing into the wooden pedestal.

"A small history lesson that you likely wouldn't have heard until you're were a sixth year, should you have chosen to take your NEWTs in History of Magic that is." Professor Flitwick said, moving on to the third corner of the square. "Goblins are one of only four known magical species in Europe that can breed with humans; goblins, veela, giants and merfolk. Naturally there are exceptions to this rule, werewolves and vampires predominantly, but we are speaking of magical species and not ritual curses.

"Each of these magical species are strongly connected to an element of nature. Veela are beings of fire, merfolk are beings of water, giants are beings of earth and goblins are beings of metal. You might ask 'what about wind?' and the answer to that would be humans. Because of these elements, these species have gifts in magic that are commonly seen in their descendants."

Gregor wasn't certain where Professor Flitwick was going with this, but he was captivated to be certain. Anything his favorite professor taught easily caught Gregor's attention.

"Fire is the element of change, and there is no branch of magic more ever changing than Charms. Water is the element of calm, and a potion handled by a merfolk or merfolk descendant tends to work twice as well as it would without. Metal is tricky because it is used both for building and for war. Goblins have minor talent in Transfiguration and Charms, but their strength lay in the warfare aspect of metal; Dueling. Earth is the element of growth and stability. The giants of old tended to the greatest gardens the world had ever seen, and they were able to bend the earth in such a way that the first wizards attempted to copy them and made what was known as Transmutation, which later evolved into Transfiguration."

Gregor's eyes widened, his heart hammered, and he choked on air randomly. Professor Babbling walked up behind him and repeatedly slapped her hand against his back, forcing his breathing to return to normal. While this was happening Professor Flitwick moved on to the fourth and final corner of the pedestal square.

"Wind is the most difficult element to define because it takes everything in. Wind can snuff out fire, can create monstrous waves on the ocean, can destroy metals from stone and can tear the earth asunder. Wind can _also_ keep a fire going, can carry ships across the sea, can unveil metals from stone and can carry soil and dirt for plants to grow. The greatest power of wind is the fact that it has no form, it has no limit. Human witches and wizards are similar in this regard, they have no natural specialty when it comes to the magical arts but they have the ability to be great at any and everything. They can go past what magic the magical species I previously said specialize in and create their own arts. It is because of this, because of this nature, that humans can breed with the four magical species I mentioned. The term for people born from and descend from this union are called Mixedblood. I should note that while Mixedbloods normally have talent in their ancestral element, there is nothing wrong with focusing on another subject."

Gregor felt his heartbeat going a mile a minute. His breath quickened and he felt like the room was spinning. Was he Mixedblood? Was his mother or father or grandmother or grandfather one of these- these… He didn't know the words. He felt his mouth dry and abruptly sat down on the ground, his body seemed like it had shut down on him.

Professor Babbling put her hand back on his back and started to rub it softly, humming a strange tune all the while. Professor Flitwick looked at the large boy with empathy, at one point in time he had a similar reaction to learning of his heritage.

He continued speaking, knowing that the boy needed distraction from him self-destructive thoughts more than anything.

"There is a reason the Ritual Chamber is hidden under a Fidelius charm. Three centuries ago, the Ministry of Magic banned all forms of rituals in England and labeled them a Dark Art; this decree was later copied by almost all of Europe. The Ministry intended to destroy this chamber and seal it up, and it was around that time that the Fidelius charm was invented by Hogwarts very own Charms professor, Edgar Whit. He put the Ritual Chamber under the charm and the responsibility to keep it secret has been passed down by Hogwarts Charms professors ever since."

Gregor found his breathing slowing down as he listened to Professor Flitwick speak. "Wha- Why were rituals called Dark Arts? What are Dark Arts?" The term Dark Art was quite obscure; he didn't even know what it _meant_ aside from the fact that it was bad.

"Dark Arts are magic's that the Ministry labels as illegal, each having different punishments for their use. Most of these magic's are indeed extremely immoral and are banned for good reason, but some, such as rituals, were called Dark Arts for political reasons. As I said earlier, rituals are the magic of sacrifice; pain, flesh, blood, life. The Ministry couldn't keep track of ritualists all too well, and like all forms of government they like to control their subjects. I am not badmouthing the Ministry mind you, plenty of rituals were terrible and inhumane things, but it was a poorly planned bit of law that has put a stop to what used to be one of the most celebrated fields of magic in Europe."

Professor Babbling continued from there, her hand still rubbing against Gregor's back. "As an Ancient Runes mistress, I have an exemption towards using a specific list of rituals, including the Inheritance of Othala. I set up the wood and branded the rune and pentagon into it, but since it was a goblin ritual in the first place I had Squeaks here do the detailing."

Professor Flitwick scowled at the nickname but offered a short nod to Gregor, "I carved the name of the four races in Gobbledegook, the goblin tongue. What we would like for you to do is to help us determine if you truly are a Mixedblood and participate in this ritual."

Gregor closed his eyes and tried to remain calm.

It wasn't working well.

All his life he'd been called unnatural, been called a freak. His mum has tried to keep him away from people like that but all the same he knew what they would say behind his back.

Bu-But what if he really _was_ unnatural? Humans were supposed to breed with humans, not whatever made him. It wasn't _right._

He found himself drifting in memory, remembering the day when he asked his mum if he was a freak.

 _"If you're a freak then I'm useless piece of trash. They're a pair of labels that we've both gained, you from Ms. Hill and me from my father. And you know what? To hell with my father, and to hell with Ms. Hill too! Freak? Useless piece of trash? Who_ cares _what they say about us? They don't matter Gregor, nobody matters unless you make them matter. You matter to me and I hope I matter to you. I don't think you're a freak, do you think I'm a useless piece of trash?"_

When he told her _No_ , _of course I don't, you're my mum_ she nodded with a smile.

 _"Then that's all that matters."_

His mum wouldn't care, and she was the only one that mattered.

"I'll do the ritual." Both professors looked pleased and Professor Babbling explained how it worked.

"The Inheritance of Othala is a blood based ritual; all you have to do is cut your hand and put it on the Othala rune. The blood will either do nothing, showing that you're just a tall human, or it will flow towards one of the four square corners. If the blood does flow towards one of the corners, then the symbol on that corner will light up a certain way to determine how closely related to that magical species you are. I will be able to tell you what light will mean, but you need not worry about the details."

Gregor nodded and shakily made his way to the podium. Professor Flitwick offered him the knife that was used to carve the goblin script, and Gregor took it with unstable fingers. He knelt down, put his hand over the Othala rune and after closing his eyes as tightly as he could slit the ritual blade across the palm of his hand. It _hurt_ , far more than breaking bones did for certain, but he trudged on regardless of his pain and slapped his palm on the rune. He could _feel_ his magic surging with his blood into the rune.

Othala started glowing brightly from underneath Gregor's hand and the blood pooled from the rune towards the bottom left corner of the square. When it reached the symbol, it radiated a dull green, like algae.

"Well," Professor Babbling started. "You're a quarter-giant Bigs."

He felt numb and blacked out.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

As it turns out, Gregor cut at his hand far deeper than was necessary which, added to his internal crisis and the blunt revelation of his origins, forced his body to shut down.

Professor Flitwick needed to return to the Great Hall for the Halloween feast, but Professor Babbling, not being a head of a Hogwarts house, opted to stay with Gregor. She confided that she didn't like feasts, she was a fairly introverted person and only accepted her Hogwarts job on the condition that she could pick and choose when and where she ate her meals; feasts included.

She decided that, since Gregor did such a good job, she would show him one of her main haunts. She brought him to the Hogwarts basement, which she explained was where the Hufflepuff dorm was located, and led him to a portrait of a gigantic silver fruit bowl. She tickled the pear of the portrait and Gregor watched as it squirmed and laughed and turned into a green doorknob.

She opened the door, and revealed to Gregor the entrance to the Hogwarts Kitchens. It was a gigantic room, nearly size of the Great Hall with five tables that looked identical to Great Hall's tables in the same positions.

Professor Babbling explained that this was because the tables were linked, and when food was placed on a table in the kitchen it would then transfer to its identical table in the Great Hall.

The house-elves were all too happy to have company, and Gregor found his attention quickly losing focus on his identity crisis and focusing on _how the hell these things were so damned peppy._

TTTTTTTTTTTT

The next day, Gregor was hoping to just return to his standard routine. He would get up early with Hermione, go to breakfast, go to classes, go to the library and explore the grounds.

Instead, Hermione didn't get up early like she normally did. He could ignore that, he had slept in a few times and just because she hadn't yet didn't mean she wouldn't.

What he could not ignore, however, was the fact that Hermione came in with Weasley and Potter and the three seemed to be joined at the hip. She led them over to where he sat, took her normal place on his right and both Potter and Weasley sat in front of them.

He did not know how this came about, but he knew for a fact that it wasn't likely his routine would be returning any time soon.

He scowled and stabbed his fork into a bit of sausage, knowing somehow that life wouldn't be simple anymore.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

 **A/N: So, here we are. Chapter 2 is done.**

 **This didn't take nearly as long as it should.**

 **So, Gregor and Hermione. In Cannon Hermione was an outcast and a loner because nobody liked her. In my story, Gregor is also an outcast, though more out of people straying away from him than anything, and when Hermione didn't do that he clung onto her. They're friends, and while I don't have any pairings in mind, if I even** ** _do_** **any, it's unlikely that they will be paired together.**

 **The scenes with Harry and Ron were pretty much taken from the book. Harry was a bit of a jerk pre-Halloween, and Ron is a character I just don't like on a personal level; though I have absolutely no intention of bashing anybody.**

 **Gregor views Harry poorly because he believes the boy to be a money grubber. I know, weird right? But think of it like this; Harry has an entire book series using his name. Normally, if that were to happen, the author of the stories would need permission from the person they wrote about to do that, and that permission would involve a percentage fee. So, after looking through the Harry Potter adventure series, Gregor's opinion of Harry is pretty damned low. He doesn't hate the guy, he just doesn't really know him and has made his own opinions, false though they may be.**

 **And the thing with Ron? Ron's eleven, Gregor's twelve. He doesn't** ** _need_** **a reason to dislike people, I know for a fact that I hated half my class at that age for no reason whatsoever.**

 **The ritual bits were tricky to write, but Gregor needed to learn early on that he was a quarter-giant and, in the future, I intend to use rituals quite a bit. So, to get him familiar with them I decided to have him learn about his heritage through a ritual.**

 **As always, if you liked this chapter please Favorite/Follow and don't forget to send me a Review. If anybody is interested in being a Beta for this story, please send me a Private Message.**


	3. III

**Not much to say this time around, enjoy the chapter.**

TTTTTTTTTTTT

 _Hogwarts staff room, Novermber 2_ _nd_ _._

Albus Dumbledore smiled genially behind his large beard as his professors and other staff members, such as Argus Filch, let loose their woes in his office. On the second of each month starting from October a staff meeting would take place in his office where he could gain insight as to how students were doing and who he should look out for. More often than not these meetings eventually escalated into talks of promiscuous upper years taking advantage of empty classrooms, the poor quality of school brooms, the soon-to-be troubles the Weasley twins would cause and much much more.

"I just cannae believe how fool she was!" Minerva ranted, her accent slipping out as her tirade went on. "One of mi top students, brightest witch of her class, and she nearly loses her life because she thought she could take on a mountain troll?! Dumb luck, dumb luck is the only reason she's not a bloody mess on that washroom wall!"

Albus' smile became strained at the mention of the troll. He had no physical proof as to who brought it inside his school, so he couldn't truly let his quickening anger show, but he _knew_. Voldemort was still alive, the signs were there if one knew what to look for, and with the return of Harry Potter to the wizarding world it was only a matter of time before Tom would attempt to come back.

"I doubt she truly thought that," Severus growled out. Albus was well aware that the school Potion's Master was not a fan of these meetings, "It was likely Potter whispering in her ear. Could have told her to lie so he would escape detention; she might have lied on her own in hopes of getting in his good graces. Either way, Granger's not so stupid as to try and take on a Mountain Troll, not unless she had somebody more stupid whispering in her ear."

Minerva scoffed, "Telling the truth or not, I highly doubt she would challenge a Mountain Troll purely because Mr. Potter told her to. She's joined at the hip with Mr. Clegane half the time and Mr. Potter isn't the type to do something like that anyways."

Filius chimed in, "I myself have no opinion on the subject, I was busy getting the students back to their dorms, but I know for a fact that Mr. Clegane wasn't at the Halloween feast. So, whatever else, know that he wasn't involved."

"And where was my largest lion?" Minerva asked, her eyes turning cold. "I didn't see him at the feast; I had thought he and Miss Granger were together as always and intended to give them proper punishment the day after. Then the mess with the Mountain Troll came up and I put the thought aside."

"Well…" Filius said, straightening his robe nervously; far from how he would normally act. "Mr. Clegane had a bit of a faint and went to the kitchens for supper, away from the loud noises that would addle his head more."

The entire faculty in Albus' office stared at the small man with a healthy amount of skepticism, and he in turn found the ceiling to be quite interesting.

"Squeaks is being silly Kitty, we performed an inheritance ritual on Bigs." Professor Babbling said, her black eyes as unfocused as always.

"Bathsheda!" "What?!" both Filius and Minerva cried out, the first in annoyance and the latter in shock.

"Ritual?!" Minerva continued, her eyes alight in righteous anger. "You performed a _ritual_ on a twelve year old boy?! _Have ye' lost yer mind?!_ "

"We had his permission!" Filius squeaked out quickly, but found himself feeling even smaller than usual when met with the glare of his longtime colleague.

Albus held up a hand, and all chatter silenced with his action. "Filius, would you please tell us why you chose to perform a ritual on one of your students?" Though his voice seemed to only be mildly curious, the steely look in his eyes made the quarter-goblin shift further into his seat. Albus Dumbledore was the type of man to listen before acting, but if he heard what he didn't like he would act swiftly and decisively.

Filius knew that he was backed into a corner; it wasn't exactly _legal_ to perform a ritual on somebody without Ministry knowhow. Just because Bathsheda had an exemption to performing certain rituals didn't mean she was allowed to perform them on a whim. There was a process that involved weeks and weeks of paperwork for what was likely to be a big fat 'NO.'

They simply chose to ignore that bit when performing the Inheritance of Othala.

"I will tell you all on the condition that it not leave this room." If the Ministry or anybody sympathetic to the Ministry heard what he and Bathsheda had done, both of them would likely be out of the job and Gregor would be on his way out of Hogwarts in less than a weeks' time.

The various professors and staff members of the school nodded; their apparent interest in whatever made the Charms and Ancient Runes professors use something widely believed to be illegal on a first year student overcoming their common sense.

Filius took a small breath and spoke as clearly as he could, "One day in October he came to me and asked what the term Mixedblood meant. I asked him why he wanted to know, and he informed me that a good few students were whispering the word behind his back."

Most of the faculty grimaced; Hagrid even had a scowl on his generally cheerful visage.

"Naturally, due to my own lineage, I wanted this question to be answered properly. Bathsheda helped me set up the Inheritance of Othala, and on Halloween after my last Charms class for the day I asked him to stay behind. I explained my heritage, explained what rituals were in the basic sense, and after going into detail of what a Mixedblood actually was I asked him to perform the ritual."

Bathsheda continued on from that point, looking directly at Albus with unusual clarity. "Squeaks wanted things to be done right, so he asked me to be witness. Bigs took the ritual and it came out positive. The ritual is a simple thing, if it glows brightly you're a full, lightly you're a half, dull you're a quarter; it doesn't record anybody lower than that. Bigs is, in fact, a quarter-giant."

Quirinus let out a shriek and promptly fainted, while the rest of the faculty looked on wide eyed; Hagrid was sniffling loudly into his hankie.

Filius finished from there, "The ritual is blood based and Gregor cut his hand too deeply which, added to his all-too-likely internal crises, led the boy to faint. He was too groggy and needed time away from prying eyes, so I gave him permission to skip the Halloween feast and Bathsheda showed him how to go to the kitchens."

Albus found himself staring at his door, his mind thinking quickly. So it was true, the boy was indeed a Mixedblood. There was nothing wrong with such a status; in fact Albus celebrated students such as Mr. Clegane entering his school. Individuals with Mixedblood showed so much promise in their primal field that it was honestly a shame that there was a stigma involve with being one.

Mixedbloods were feared _because_ they had so much raw capability. Hagrid was a good example. It took six stunners fired at the same time to knock the man out, and even then it would only be for a short while. Add such magical resistance to a Mixedblood individual with an _education_ and the Ministry would only see one thing; a threat. Not all Mixedbloods had this capability of course, spell resistance primarily showed in people with giants blood, but all Mixedbloods had abilities that made them difficult to handle by standard human magicals.

"None of you." Albus started simply, his blue eyes sweeping across the room with a steel glint. "None of you will speak of this, just as Filius asked. Prejudice has a strong grip on England and I want none of it to affect the students of Hogwarts."

The staff quickly nodded, regardless of their personal opinions on the subject they understood that the word of the Headmaster was law; breaking said law could lead to the loss of employment.

"On a brighter topic," Albus continued, his eyes slowly beginning to twinkle behind his half-moon spectacles. "Quidditch! I hear Gryffindor has a new Seeker, Minerva. Tell me how that came to be."

TTTTTTTTTTTT

Gregor had nearly gone mad trying to figure out why in the hell Hermione was so close to Potter and Weasley all of a sudden. She refused to say, just telling him that they resolved their differences on Halloween, but Gregor didn't believe it. She still argued with the pair of them almost all the time, Weasley thrice more than Potter, and there was no way she would do that if they really _did_ make up. He tried to accept the situation for his best friends' sake and change the subject to asking for her Potions notes, but when she admitted she had skipped that lesson he knew it would be impossible to accept her new friendships at face value.

Hermione would never skip class unless something serious had happened.

Both Potter and Weasley were silent as a rock when he asked them instead. Potter would just look away shiftily and Weasley would get a scowl on his face.

So he tried asking his classmates. He was aware that most of the first year students didn't much like him; his size scared them off. With the personal revelation that he was a quarter-giant and his recent understanding of what a Mixedblood was and how they were viewed, he could understand at the very least. Gregor made the decision to keep thoughts of his lineage at bay for the time being; it only told him why he was taller than average and that most folk would keep away; nothing that he didn't already know. Gregor would research his roots on his own time, that was a certainty, but while he was in Hogwarts he would focus on learning magic over learning about his birth parents.

When he went to the Gryffindor common room and asked his yearmates the following happened; Fay, Parvati and Lavender just ran away when he asked, Seamus and Dean had simply shrugged without a care in the world and Neville honestly had no idea.

He then tried the other houses; excluding Slytherin of course. The Hufflepuff first years just ignored him as a whole, the exception being a kid named Zacharias Smith; he would glare at Gregor all the time and make these snide comments constantly. Gregor sort of knew why, his mum had been born a Smith and was apparently Zacharias' aunt, making Gregor his cousin, and the kid just didn't like squibs.

They would not be having a proper familial relationship any time soon.

It was when seeking out his Ravenclaw year mates that Gregor finally got an answer. They mostly ignored him, similar to the Hufflepuffs, but Su Li had broken from the mold and stuttered out an answer. She didn't know how the trio got together, nobody did but the trio themselves, but she _did_ know that Weasley had said a bunch of mean things and Hermione ran off in tears and hadn't been seen till curfew.

Whatever Weasley said had been mean enough to make Hermione skip a class. That would normally warrant a simple lesson in the form of a beat down, but somehow she decided to start hanging around the pillock.

It just didn't add up to Gregor.

And then the troll! He didn't even _know_ that a troll got into Hogwarts until Lavender and Parvati gossiped too loudly when he was nearby.

So Gregor decided to simply do what he was best at. He wasn't subtle, but he _was_ a Gryffindor and they were supposed to charge in, so he waited for curfew to hit. Weasley and Potter weren't in the first year boys dorm room yet, which suited Gregor just fine.

"Seamus, Dean, Neville." He called, and the trio of boys who were preparing for bed look at him as one. "Can you three do me a favor?"

Dean shrugged, "What's up?" Seamus and Neville looked up, equally confused but seemed willing to listen all the same.

"Any chance you two could head back down when Potter and Weasley get here? I need to talk to them alone and they've been avoiding me all day."

"This 'bout the Granger thing?" Seamus asked, still remembering his large dormmate asking about what happened during the feast. When Gregor gave Seamus a short nod the three Gryffindor's complied without much of a fuss.

Potter and Weasley came up eight minutes later; chattering on about Quidditch or some such. Seamus, Dean and Neville all left the room without another word.

Gregor pulled out his wand and grunted out the locking spell that Hermione taught him a week ago, "Collorportus!" The door closed loudly behind the pair, the lock on the door clicking quickly, and the Potter Weasley duo stared at Gregor with wide eyes and quickly paling skin.

Gregor stood up from his bed and motioned to the two with his hand, "Take a seat." When they didn't move he added fuel to his fire, _"Now."_

They bolted to their respective beds, both next to each other, and sat straight backed. Potter reached for his wand and Gregor didn't bother to stop the action; this wasn't meant to be a violent talk but it _would_ be a talk.

"So," Gregor started, pacing around the carpet of the circular dorm. "Something happened the other night, something that caused _Hermione_ to suddenly like the two of you. Hermione, the same girl that almost hated the two of you just the day before."

Potter looked squarely at Gregor while Weasley shuffled about on his bed nervously, looking anywhere but in Gregor's direction.

"Hermione doesn't want to tell me, says it's too personal, so I won't bother making you to tell me; that'd get me on her bad side. I do, however, want to give you a warning."

"A warning?" Weasley asked, his voice cracking slightly.

Gregor nodded slowly, he stopped his pacing and made his way to the edge of their beds, staring the pair of them down. His size, added to their sitting down and the roaring fire pit behind him made Gregor look far more imposing than he truly was.

"I know that she skipped Potions, and I know my best friend better than you two, that's for certain. Hermione would never skip a class, so I asked myself _why would she?_ Took a little while to answer, had to do a bit of digging you see, but I learned the reason."

Gregor turned his gaze firmly onto Weasley and the ginger shifted further into his bed, his back touching the stone wall and his blue eyes were closed shut. Potter steadied his wand and trained it on Gregor, doing nothing else; Gregor hadn't done anything aside from talking after all.

Gregor spoke clearly, "I don't like you Weasley, I make no secret of that. Hermione wants to be your friend for reasons I'll likely never know, so for your sake you'll listen well. Make her cry again, say whatever it is you said to her on Halloween one more time, and I'll _bury_ you."

He'd made threats before, in his own defense and in defense of his mum, but never had he threatened somebody in defense of a friend. Friends were worth more to Gregor than his own safety, and Hermione was his _best_ friend.

Weasley whimpered and nodded quickly, his ginger hair whipping with the quick movements of his head. Potter kept his eyes and wand firmly trained on Gregor and Gregor offered the bespectacled boy a firm nod. He walked up to the door to the common room, pulled out his wand, quickly exclaimed "Allohomora" on the doorknob. It clicked, signifying that it was unlocked, and Gregor opened it wide.

"Oi! Seamus, Dean, Neville! Thanks for waiting mates, things're all clear."

The trio of boys made their way back up to the dorm and found their beds soon after. Gregor made his way to his own bed and got under the covers. Snores started echoing throughout the dorms, yet the loud snores and quiet huffs that Weasley and Potter would usually make when asleep were strangely absent from the sleeping chorus.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

Two days later Gregor found himself being dragged by Hermione and a cacophony of Gryffs towards the Quidditch pitch. She, along with Neville, Seamus, Dean and Weasley had wanted to support Potter so they made a banner out of a sheet Weasley's pet rat Scabbers had ruined. It said Potter for President, and Dean, who was surprisingly good at drawing, had done a large Gryffindor lion underneath. Hermione added onto that by performing a tricky little charm that made the paint flash different colors.

They found their seats at the top row of their stands, each Hogwarts house had assigned seats when their team was playing, and when their team wasn't they could sit wherever they chose. Apparently it was quite common for brawls and duels to occur between competing houses during the course of a game.

When the match started, Gregor would bluntly admit his initial opinions of Quidditch were dead wrong. From reading the book _Quidditch Through the Ages_ he knew that it was a somewhat quick paced game, but no book could explain the feeling of watching a match. He had initially believed the game to be silly, after all who would want to play a game that had over seven hundred types of fouls?

Players were flying everywhere, fighting with their body's midair in order to get their hands on the quaffle. The Beaters were hitting the bludgers back and forth, trying desperately to knock enemy players off their broomsticks from a hundred feet in the air. Wood, the Gryffindor Keeper, was pulling stunt after stunt and, for the most part, succeeding in keeping Slytherin Chasers from letting the quaffle near the goals; the same could not be said for the Slytherin Keeper, whose name escaped Gregor's mind.

Early in the game, Potter looked as if he'd struck gold and shot after, well, gold; a small speck of it. The Slytherin Seeker, Gregor believed his name was Higgs, chased on after Potter as quick as he could. Then Flint, the Slytherin captain and one of their Chaser's snatched one of his Beaters bats and smacked a bludger at Potter's broom. Potter's broom had spun off course and the black haired boy was hanging on to his broomstick for dear life.

"Foul!" screamed the Gryffindors, and Gregor surprisingly found himself among the screams. Say what he will about Potter, but Quidditch was a game that got people involved.

"Send him off ref!" Dean yelled, his hand hovering over his neck for some strange reason. "Red card!"

"What're you talking about Dean?" Weasley asked, sat as far from Gregor as he could be.

"Red card!" Dean said furiously. "In football you get shown the red card and you're out of the game!"

"But this isn't football, Dean," Weasley admonished, and Dean looked as if he was going to take his quickly growing anger out on the redhead. Hermione wasn't even looking at the kid, so Gregor subtly knocked him upside the head. Weasley scowled, before realizing the one that smacked him was the one that threatened to kill him just two days prior, and quickly moved to the other side of Dean.

Hagrid, who also sat in the Gryffindor stand, spoke up. "They oughta change the rules. Flint coulda knocked Harry outta the air."

Lee Jordan, a third year student and commentator for the match was quick to make his opinions known as well. "So! After that obvious and disgusting bit of cheat-"

"Jordan!" growled Professor McGonagall from his side.

"I mean, after that open and revolting foul-"

" _Jordan, I'm warning you-_ "

"All right, all right. Flint nearly kills the Gryffindor Seeker, which could happen to anyone, I'm sure, so a penalty to Gryffindor, taken by Spinnet, who puts it away, no trouble, and we continue play, Gryffindor still in possession."

Gregor found his eyes widen as, while the Beaters and Chasers were going at it midfield, Potter looked as if he was on a bucking horse overhead.

"Dunno what Harry thinks he's doing," Hagrid mumbled. He stared through his binoculars. "If I didn' know better, I'd say he'd lost control of his broom- but he can't have…"

His broom had started to roll over and over with Potter only just managing to hold on. Then the whole of the crowd gasped; Potter's broom had given a wild jerk and Potter was swung off it, his body dangling from the broom with only one hand holding on to the wood.

"Did something happen to it when Flint pulled a cheapshot?" Seamus asked.

"Can't have." Hagrid said, his voice shaking and his beard quivering. "Can't nothing interfere with a broomstick except powerful Dark magic – no kid could do that to a Nimbus Two Thousand."

Gregor found that to be believable. Professor Flitwick said that Dark magic and the Dark Arts in general were magic's that the Ministry deemed illegal and it was perfectly understandable that they would label a magic that could control broomsticks to be such. They wouldn't want their precious Quidditch players to die when a drunk got mad halfway during a bad game.

"I knew it," Hermione gasped, using Hagrid's binoculars and Gregor had to wonder when she snatched those. "Snape – look!"

Gregor had to count from ten to one to stop a small snarl from escaping his lips when Hermione handed the binoculars to Weasley.

"He's doing something; jinxing the broom." Hermione continued, giving a hard look to Weasley.

"What should we do?" he asked in turn.

"Leave it to me."

Gregor watched this display with hazed eyes. Hermione was _his_ friend. He wasn't going to stop her from making friends, heavens no, but this was _Weasley!_

He felt she needed to make different friends; maybe Fay.

He snatched the binoculars from Weasley, which made the ginger squawk in protest, and trained the glass lenses onto Hermione as she bolted over to the staff stands. When she made it, accidentally knocking over Professor Quirrell in the process, she snuck underneath the stands and, after muttering something with her wand trained on the hem of Snape's robes, lit them up in a blue fire. It took about half a minute for anybody to notice he was on fire, but when it was noticed a small panic ensued. Professor Sprout, who was next to Snape, almost tackled him trying to put out the fire. When Snape finally had enough he pointed his wand at the fire and doused it with a stream of water; smoke covered his body.

Gregor trained the binoculars back on and watched as Potter got back up onto his now still broom and darted towards the green of the field. He made a quick dive and barreled into the ground after swerving around the pitch, his hands covering his mouth all the while. He spat something shimmering and gold out into his hands and waved it wildly at the stands, "I got the snitch!"

Gregor grinned, happily cheering with Gryffindor and handed Hagrid back his binoculars. Hermione made her way back up to the stands not a moment later, her forehead a tad sweaty and she was out of breath. Gregor mussed her bushy hair, earning him a glare that he returned with a toothy smile.

"Good job, you've got to teach me how to make blue fire." She blushed under his praise and swatted his hand away, fixing up her hair as best she could.

"Do that to my hair again and I'll give you an example you'll never forget," she said darkly.

It wasn't every day that Gregor actually feared a threat from a girl his own age; but this was Hermione and he knew she knew far more than he did when it came to spellwork.

Hagrid invited all that wanted to come to his hut, offering tea in celebration. Most of the first years gave their thanks but chose to join the quickly growing party in the Gryffindor common room; only Hermione, Gregor, Potter and Weasley accepted his offer.

"It was Snape," Weasley explained to Potter as they nursed a pair of strong cups of tea. "Hermione and I saw him. He was cursing your broomstick, muttering, he wouldn't take his eyes off you."

"Rubbish," Hagrid said quickly. "Why would Snape do somethin' like that?"

Potter, Weasley and Hermione all looked at each other silently, wondering what they should tell the groundskeeper; Gregor happily sipped on his tea in silence. Potter decided to speak the truth.

"I found out something about him," he told Hagrid. "He tried to get past the three headed dog on Halloween. It bit him. We think he was trying to steal whatever it's guarding."

Gregor choked lightly on his tea and Hagrid dropped the teapot.

"Snape did what!?" "How d'you know about Fluffy!?"

All four children paused for a moment to rationalize what Hagrid just said, and all at once they bellowed out for the whole of Hogwarts to hear _"Fluffy?!"_

Gregor could scarcely believe that he had actually guessed the name of a Cerberus.

"Yeah, he's mine. Bought him off a Greek chappie I met in the pub las' year. I lent him to Dumbledore to guard the–"

"Yes?" Potter said eagerly.

"Now, don't ask me no more of that," Hagrid said gruffly. "That's top secret, that is."

"But Snape's trying to _steal_ it!"

"Rubbish," Hagrid said once more. "Snape's a Hogwarts teacher, not some sneak thief."

"So why did he just try and kill Harry?" Hermione cried out. "I know a jinx when I see one, Hagrid, I've read all about them, so has Gregor! You've got to keep eye contact, and Snape wasn't blinking at all, I saw him!"

Truthfully, while Gregor had in fact read that piece of information at one point in time, it was when Hermione was literally shoveling anything and everything that she considered interesting down his throat.

She considered every page of every book of every library in the world to be interesting.

"I'm tellin' yeh. Yer wrong!" Hagrid said hotly, his voice thickening and his calm quickly fading. "I don' know why Harry's broom acted like that, but Snape wouldn' try an' kill a student! Now, listen to me, all four o' yeh; yer meddlin' in things that don' concern yeh. It's dangerous. Yeh forget the dog, an' yeh forget what it's guardin', that's between Professor Dumbledore and Nicolas Flamel–"

"Aha!" Potter interrupted, causing Gregor to let out a small groan of frustration. "So there's someone called Nicolas Flamel involved, is there?"

Hagrid looked furious with himself.

"Out!" he barked, his patience almost entirely gone. Potter, Weasley and Hermione bolted out of the hut while Gregor stayed put, calmly sipping tea.

"Why aren' yeh leavin'?" Hagrid asked, his voice raw.

Gregor shrugged, putting his cup of tea down. "I don't really care about what's under Fluffy, I'm more interested in Fluffy himself. Who'd you buy him from? What does it take to raise a Cerberus? Where can I get one?"

At those questions Hagrid stilled, his annoyance quickly replaced by excitement, and he went into great detail about the wonders that were Cerberi.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

 _"The Hogwarts Express will be arriving on Platform Nine and Three Quarters in five minutes!"_

Gregor awoke with a start, the announcement disturbing his sleep.

"Have a good kip?" Hermione asked without looking at her friend; her head firmly planted inside a history text looking for any information she could on Nicolas Flamel.

Gregor shrugged out a loud yawn and stretched his arms. He'd been sleeping for the entire trip back to London.

He blamed Hermione for that.

Ever since the first Quidditch game of the season, when Hagrid accidentally let out that whatever Fluffy was guarding involved somebody named Nicolas Flamel, Hermione had gained an obsessive desire to learn who that man was. Potter and Weasley had smartly left her to her own devices but Gregor didn't have such an option.

He'd been stuck in the library with her for almost the whole of November, this time without much of a choice.

She'd shoved so many books down his throat that Gregor's sleep schedule had been altered; she made him stay up in the common room after hours while they studied. It was a relatively known fact, and also relatively ignored fact, that so long as a student was inside their House specific commons they could sleep whenever they chose to. It was why common room parties could last until the next day; Professor McGonagall didn't raise a fuss unless the Gryffindors were making too much noise or somebody got hurt.

The Express slowed as it made its way onto Platform Nine and Three Quarters. The crimson steam engine came to a complete stop and a gaggle of parents waited with baited breaths. The doors opened and students piled out of the train, eager to see their parents.

Gregor was among these students; he'd missed his mum terribly. He looked around the platform wildly, his eyes zeroing in on a woman with dyed black hair that was speaking to an older couple garbed in muggle clothing. He bolted up to her and scooped her up, hugging her tightly while ignoring her squeal of surprise.

"Gregor!" Dorothy said, her voice warm and her body shifted in order to return the hug with equal fervor. He put her back down, a smile lighting his face, and his mum scrutinized him.

"Well, seems you grew _again_ and is that hair on your chin?" she asked, her red painted nails coming up to his chin and pulling on a strand of peach fuzz. Gregor let out a yelp when she plucked it, giving his mum a petulant frown.

Dorothy turned to the couple she was speaking to earlier, the pair looking quite astounded at Gregor, and stage whispered to them. "Twelve years old and he's already this big and growing hairs on his chin; too much of an early bloomer, my son is."

The fact that she spoke like Yoda caused the couple to chuckle along with her; Gregor had a twinkle in his eyes.

It was good to hear his mum's humor again; letters only did so much.

Hermione came over, a strange mix between a smile and a frown on her face. She bolted to the couple and wrapped them in a hug, one that was returned quickly and strongly by the pair. Gregor took a look at them and noticed that Hermione shared a good few features with them; both had brown hair and eyes, and the man had curly hair while the woman had Hermione's nose.

"These are Rupert and Emma Granger; we've been speaking since October." Dorothy said, noticing her sons stare on the couple.

"What for?" Gregor asked.

Rupert Granger gave Gregor his answer, "When my princess said that she had a _boy_ for a best friend I had to make sure he wouldn't be the wrong sort!"

"DAD!" Hermione yelped, her face aflame in a blush and Gregor found his eye twitching at that answer; his mum just found it funny.

Emma smacked her husband over the head and turned to Gregor with a smile, "Ignore my husband. Truthfully Hermione's not had the best luck when it came to making friends and we got curious when she mentioned you by name is all."

That was a much more reasonable answer in Gregor's mind.

Dorothy tugged at his sleeve, "You can use the phone to talk to Hermione whenever you want, but I'd like to head home now. I'll speak with you soon I hope, Emma."

"Of course."

Gregor and Hermione exchanged goodbyes in short order and while the Grangers went towards Kings Cross Station the Cleganes went towards the open floo stations that litter the platform.

Both grabbed a handful floo powder and threw it into a pair of fireplaces that were side by side and yelled out in unison "The Mountain!"

TTTTTTTTTTTT

The Christmas break was a much needed time for Gregor.

The majority of it was spent with his mum and on his computer; he missed the both of them quite dearly.

The first thing he did was spend a nice lunch with his mum. Then he took a nap in his bed.

Then he went on Wikipedia and looked up Nicolas Flamel.

It was a long shot, not very many magicals were known in the muggle world, but it paid off spectacularly. Nicolas Flamel was a French man that lived in the 1300's that was noted to be the godfather of modern Chemistry and widely believed in folk lore to have discovered the Philosophers Stone, an item said to be able to turn lead into gold and produce the Elixir of Life through use of Alchemy.

The fact that he was still _alive_ according to Hagrid made Gregor think that the man's discovery of the Philosophers Stone was not just a bit of folk lore but a known fact; one that just wasn't commonly spoken of. He got the Grangers number from his mum and told Hermione his discovery, which made his friend moan about her parents' lack of a computer; according to her they were heavily old fashioned.

When Christmas day actually came Gregor and Dorothy spent the day together, as they always did, and exchanged gifts. He got her some prank bits that Fred and George Weasley sold and in exchange Gregor got something that would take up the remainder of his break.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

TTTTTTTTTTTT

Gregor boarded the Hogwarts Express and the moment he settled into a compartment promptly fell asleep; not even bothering to save a seat for Hermione.

In the eight days he had Skyrim he put a solid fifty hours into it. Gregor was a proud level 58 magic wielding thief that just so happened to have the normal and perfectly ordinary hobby of shouting people off cliffs.

Perhaps he shouldn't have pulled an all-nighter on the day he was meant to leave for Hogwarts; but that was something that had already passed.

At least the journey from Platform Nine and Three Quarter to Hogwarts took long enough for Gregor to get a decent amount of sleep.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

The moment they arrived at Hogwarts Hermione promptly told both Potter and Weasley that Gregor had found out who Nicolas Flamel was and what was likely being hidden at Hogwarts. The pair of them were mystified that he learned this from a computer; Potter because it seemed unlikely that a magical would be shown on one and Weasley because he couldn't wrap his ginger head around the fact that _muggles_ had boxes with near infinite amounts of knowledge in them.

Potter had to go to Quidditch practice and Gregor got roped into playing chess with Weasley by Hermione, who was apparently tired of losing to the freckled git.

Weasley was actually quite good, and more than that his chess pieces _listened_ to him. Wizarding chess was a curious thing in that the pieces themselves would often make their opinions known and sometimes would refuse to move when commanded.

At one point Gregor's knight and bishop brawled with each other.

Potter suddenly stormed into the common room, a severe frown on his face. Apparently Snape was going to be the referee for the upcoming Quidditch match, and he felt that it was unfair. Gregor was mightily confused on this; Madam Hooch was the person that dealt with Quidditch, there was no reason for the Potions' Professor to be involved in a match outside of being a spectator.

Hermione and Weasley kept offering suggestions on how to avoid this, including not playing, saying he was ill, pretending to break his leg and really breaking his leg.

It was at that moment that Neville toppled into the common room; his legs stuck together in what Gregor recognized as the leg-locker curse. Professor Quirrell had shown the class how to perform it and offered points for anybody that could get it right by the next class. Hermione performed the counter curse as quick as she could, but the inhabitants of the common room all found themselves roaring with laughter at the sight of Neville, the twins even fell over as they let out their mirth.

Gregor hated bullying, hated anything involving it, and what had happened to Neville and what _was_ happening by his fellow Gryffindors was most definitely a form of bullying; the pudgy boy looked like he was about to cry.

Gregor slammed his palm on the table he was sat at, the wizarding chess pieces all cried out "Earthquake!" and Weasley and Potter let out a yelp of fear. Gregor shouted to his housemates at the top of his lungs, " _SHUT YER GOBS!_ " and the common room went silent in short order; the only noises in the room came from Hermione and Neville.

"What happened?" she asked, leading Neville to a couch.

"Malfoy," Neville said shakily, and the Gryffindors that were laughing took the time to actually _listen_ for once. "I met him outside the library. He said he'd been looking for someone to practice that on."

"Go to Professor McGonagall!" Hermione urged. "Report him!"

"I don't want more trouble." Neville mumbled as he shook his head to and fro.

"You've got to stand up to him, Neville!" Weasley proclaim, earning nods all around. "He's used to walking all over people, but that's no reason to lie down in front of him and make it easier."

"There's no need to tell me I'm not brave enough to be in Gryffindor, Malfoy's already done that," Neville choked out, wiping his red face with the sleeve of his robe.

Potter handed the boy a chocolate frog and Gregor stood and lead him to his spot at the table; giving him free reign to the chess game. He then walked over to the now subdued Weasley twins and spoke clearly.

"You two thinkin' what I'm thinking?" he asked the pair.

They looked at each other and turned their attention back on Gregor.

"Could be-"

"Might be-"

"We know."

"Best you-"

"Just tell us-"

"Else we'll just-"

"Go with our gut."

"We've been-"

"Told that-"

"That's always-"

"A bad idea."

Gregor grinned widely and predatorily at the pair.

"Open season on Malfoy."

Normally he considered pranks to be bullying, but when pranks at Hogwarts could be thwarted with the flick of a wand it no longer held that connotation to Gregor. That, and Malfoy needed a taste of his medicine.

The twins soon matched Gregors grin.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

The coming months passed by in relative silence from then on. Quidditch was a much loved distraction of the school, the matches were numerous and the competition was fierce. School work became much more interesting, and with that interest so too came Hermione's need to be in the library during the majority of her off time.

Still, it was fun to learn the leg-locker curse Locomotor Mortis; they found an abandoned classroom and just kept shooting at each other until somebody succeeded. What was curious was the fact that when Hermione succeeded in casting the spell on Gregor, he was able to break out of the curse on his own; something that Hermione said shouldn't be possible.

He went to Professor Flitwick after that, since Hermione felt the need to spend some time with Potter and Weasley, in hopes of determining what happened.

"It's your giants blood," Professor Flitwick squeaked, nursing a cup of tea. "Giants have a natural resistance to spells, and their descendants are well known to inherit this."

Gregor furrowed a brow at that, "But when Madam Pomfrey healed my thumb she used a spell, and it worked fine."

Professor Flitwick simply nodded, "I didn't explain very clearly; you are resistant to spells that harm. Locomotor Mortis is a relatively simple and well known curse, but it has the ability to be devastating in the hands of a Charms Master or a Duelist; your spell resistance came into play at that moment. Madam Pomfrey's magic was meant to heal you, so you didn't resist in the slightest."

Gregor frowned, "But, the leg-locker just locks my legs, it's not like a cutting curse or a fire curse."

"No, and I understand your confusion; believe me. The simplest answer I can give you is that your inherit magic understands a threat better than you ever will; your spell resistance comes in the form of an instinct. I'm sure that you could learn to focus your resistance in time, but I myself do not know how to help you with that and Hagrid has never been interested in his lineage enough to do so either."

"How d'you think I'd learn how to focus it?" Gregor asked; his curiosity piqued. He enjoyed learning about magic, especially magic that only _he_ could learn. It was rare that he considered himself special in a _good_ way.

"I have absolutely no clue!" Professor Flitwick exclaimed cheerfully, sinking Gregor's spirits in a near instant. "I have only ever met one person with giants blood prior to you, and that was Hagrid. I know next to nothing about the species aside from the basics I'm afraid."

Gregor sighed. Perhaps it was too much to hope for.

"But!" Professor Flitwick exclaimed once more, "I will be _more_ than happy to discover it with you. Mixedbloods have always been an interest of mine due to my own lineage, but I've never had to chance to work with anybody aside from myself and a French half-veela that apprenticed under me two decades ago."

It was official; Professor Flitwick was Gregors favorite teacher.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

The rest of the week went by in a blur, leading up into the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff Quidditch match. The atmosphere during this match was much less tense than the last game.

The match was a fairly simple thing. Potter caught the snitch in less than five minutes, which was apparently a new school record. Aside from that, there wasn't much that happened on the field outside of Fred Weasley getting hit by a bludger in the gut.

In the stands however, Gregor found himself thriving. Malfoy decided to pester the Gryffindors midmatch, bringing his cronies Crabbe and Goyle with him as always. He hadn't had the chance to properly suffer from the twins due to their being stuck in Quidditch practice by Wood for most of their free time, so Gregor felt that it was the perfect time to instill some revenge for Neville.

While people were distracted by Potter catching the snitch, Gregor whipped out his wand and cast a Locomotor Mortis on the trio as quick as he could. They didn't know the counter curse, and Hermione didn't look the slightest bit interested in helping them out. In fact, nobody seemed interested in helping them out; not even the other Slytherin's.

That was something that definitely caught Gregor by surprise.

In the end, since nobody was willing to help Malfoy and his cronies out, and nobody felt sorry for him, none of the professors could determine who the one that cast the spell was. It was decided that it was a simple schoolyard scuffle and everybody that sat at the Gryffindor stands was given a stern lecture on appropriate behavior.

The lecture was promptly ignored the moment that they returned to the common room.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

Gregor once more found himself forced into the library, this time with both Potter and Weasley, by Hermione not even a week later.

The reason this occurred was because Hermione felt that it was time to start studying for the end of the year exams.

Which wouldn't be occurring for another three weeks.

Gregor knew that Hermione had an obsession with getting good marks, but to study as hard as she did three weeks in advance of a simple test was just _wrong_ in his mind. He'd asked Percy Weasley, the fifth year prefect, and even he, stuck on the rules though he was, admitted that the exams up till third year didn't require much studying aside from looking over in-class notes a week or so in advance.

When he told Hermione this she just scoffed and said the Percy didn't get an Outstanding on his exams.

This was later proven false by the ginger prefect, who was more than happy to brag about his grades to Gregor's bushy haired friend.

She still ignored that and continued her crusade in the library.

Gregor found himself annoyed by this, and when he went up to his dorm room two weeks later and noticed that both Potter and Weasley weren't there, he assumed that they were either exploring the school, checking up on Fluffy, or Hermione browbeat them into studying with her through the night once more.

He simply went to bed, ignoring their lack of presence.

Then the next day, when he was intent on getting some breakfast, he and all of Gryffindor stared at the giant hourglass that tallied their house points with no small sense of incredulity. They were down _one hundred and fifty points!_

Gregor looked around the table, intent on finding whoever ruined Gryffindor's chances at the House Cup, only to see Hermione sniffling like a babe into her scrambled eggs. He took a deep breath, noting that she looked absolutely miserable, and made up his mind.

He took his standard seat, on her left, and piled up some eggs and sausage onto his plate.

"So, exams?" he prompted.

She jumped at the question, and when she saw his raised brow found herself hugging at his arm for the rest of breakfast.

Gregors ears were pink for the rest of the day.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

The end-of-year feast had finally come to Hogwarts. Gregor next to Hermione, and both Potter and Weasley sat in front of the pair. The exams had gone by relatively easily, Gregor didn't know how he did on some such as Potions and Astronomy, but he knew for a fact that he got O's on Transfiguration and Herbology. Professor McGonagall had even mentioned that, if he had the time and patience, she'd be open to side lessons next year!

At the head table Dumbledore stood up and made his way to his gilded podium.

"Another year gone!" he said cheerfully. "And I must trouble you with an old man's wheezing waffle before we sink out teeth into our delicious feast. What a year it has been! Hopefully your heads are all a little fuller than they were – you have the whole summer ahead to get them nice and empty before next year!

"Now, as I understand it, the house cup here needs awarding and the points stand thus: in fourth place, Gryffindor, with 312 points; in third, Hufflepuff, with 352; Ravenclaw has 426 and Slytherin, 472."

A storm of cheering and stamping broke out from the Slytherin table. Gregor kept his darker thoughts to himself; Hermione was his friend and he had forgiven her for losing the House Cup.

Potter and Weasley, not so much.

She had told him that she wouldn't mention _how_ the points were lost until they were back on the Hogwarts Express for their summer break. Gregor would admit that he was excited to learn whatever it was, not many things could make his friend so silent.

"Yes, yes, well drone, Slytherin," Dumbledore said brightly, his beard twitching wildly as he spoke. "However, recent events must be taken into account. I have a few last-minute points to dish out. Let me see. Yes…" He cleared his throat and spoke clearly and authoritatively.

"First – to Mr. Ronald Weasley for the best played game of chess Hogwarts has seen in many years, I award Gryffindor house fifty points."

Gryffindor cheers nearly raised the bewitched ceiling; the stars overhead seemed to quiver. Percy Weasley could be heard telling the other prefects, "My brother, you know! My youngest brother! Got past McGonagall's giant chess set!"

Gregor himself was silent, only politely clapping. He had no idea that Professor McGonagall even had a giant chess set, but he supposed that Weasley _was_ good at chess if nothing else.

At least he was making up his points lost, last minute or not.

When silence returned Dumbledore spoke again.

"Second – to Miss Hermione Granger, for the use of cool logic in the face of fire, I award Gryffindor house fifty points."

Gregor grinned at his friend and shook her almost violently as she tried to bury her face in her arms, hiding her red cheeks from her roaring table.

"Third – to Mr. Harry Potter, for pure nerve and outstanding courage, I award Gryffindor house sixty points."

The cheers were absolutely deafening. Gryffindor now had 472 points, tied with Slytherin for the House Cup. Dumbledore raised his hand and the room fell silent once more.

"There are many forms of courage, some obvious and some not so much." He said solemnly. "It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much, if not more so, to stand up to our friends. I therefore award ten points to Mr. Neville Longbottom."

Roars of approval rang throughout the hall from all the tables; aside from Slytherin of course. Gregor couldn't help but give them a bit of pity. True, the Slyertherins he interacted with were a fairly nasty sort, Draco Malfoy came to mind, but the majority of them seemed alright if a little quiet. They didn't deserve the treatment the hall was giving them.

Then again…

The stricken look of horror on Malfoy's face made Gregor hoot and holler along with his house just the same; serves the ponce right for being such an absolute ass for the whole year.

TTTTTTTTTTTT

 **A/N: There we go, took a little while for this to come out, but the simple truth is that I have other things to do and I don't put** ** _too_** **much time into Fanfiction any more. It's a wonderful website, has helped me learn how to write, and I'm proud to say that I am now writing an actual novel.**

 **The writing will not be reminiscent of what you lot see, it's going to be a high fantasy novel that I hope to finish up by December; that'll be a great birthday present to myself.**

 **So, onto the story. Gregor is, in case you haven't noticed, a kid. Regardless of his size or disposition, he is still a twelve year old boy. A mature one to be certain, but still a kid. He's going to be embarrassed when Hermione hugs him, he's an absolute momma's boy and he's going to do stupid stuff. I skipped over a lot of the school year because I am writing about an OC, and while there isn't much happening right now I don't want Gregor to be a Golden Trio groupie, or become the new member of the Golden Quattro. He is friends with Hermione, not Harry or Ron, and since she's friends with the two of them he spends the occasional afternoon with the pair.**

 **The story will branch off and turn into my vision come second year, I've had this idea in my head since April and I'm excited to write what is to come. I guarantee you won't expect it.  
**

 **If you liked this please Favorite/Follow and don't forget to Review. I absolutely love them and they really help me out as a writer.**


End file.
